The climate change satire Digger, starring Tom Cruise and directed by Oscar-winner Alejandro G. Iñárritu, has intensely divided critics, with some hailing it as a bold triumph on par with Dr. Strangelove and others trashing it as complete misfire that might be “the worst movie of Tom Cruise’s career.”
The film debuted on Rotten Tomatoes to an evenly split 52 percent rating this week with starkly divided reviews that offered little to no in-between. While the The London Evening Standard hailed the film as “audacious, risky, terrific fun” in its five-star review, The Boston Globe gave it zero stars and outright trashed it as the worst film of Tom Cruise’s career, which is indeed saying something when that includes duds like 2017’s The Mummy.
“All these preening, obnoxiously self-satisfied moments, and so many more, add up to a movie so convinced of its own brilliance that it cannot see it is in fact the most banal variety of idiot: loud, ugly and forever oblivious to its own shortcomings,” wrote The Globe and Mail. “There is no overarching strategy to Digger, just endless scheming from a cinematic charlatan who should have been buried by Hollywood two or three movies ago.”
Likewise, The Hollywood Reporter trashed the film as a “climate crisis satire so smug and bombastic it makes Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up seem almost innocuous,” a movie that “happens when you put two outsize egos together with nobody holding the reins to keep their most self-indulgent impulses in check.”
“It’s difficult to imagine mainstream audiences ever wanting to be a part of this bludgeoning ordeal,” added THR.
However, the critics who did appreciate the film, gave it high accolades.
“Iñárritu again proves he is one of the most original and fascinating filmmakers working today,” wrote Deadline. “Digger is the kind of movie we don’t see often on this scale, an ambitious satire that entertains, takes chances, sparks arguments, but is thrillingly alive as cinema designed to make us look at ourselves, hopefully wake up before it is too late, and ask the question: ‘What the hell are we doing?’”
The film is tracking for a domestic box office opening between $9 million and $19 million on a production budget of at least $120 million.