Tom Cruise appears unrecognizable in Digger, hidden beneath prosthetic makeup as Digger Rockwell, a balding, greying, paunchy oil baron—a stark departure from his typical athletic, ageless hero roles. The BBC describes it as the "weirdest film" Cruise has ever made, one where he risks being called pretentious and self-indulgent rather than breaking bones on set.
Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, the Mexican filmmaker behind Birdman and The Revenant, Digger functions as an eco-satire that explores self-delusion and the blurred line between art and artist. According to IndieWire, it represents the third chapter in Iñárritu's loose trilogy of postmodern films examining creativity when reality has become stranger than fiction. The film is conceptually challenging and deliberately bizarre, making it unlikely to appeal to mainstream audiences expecting another Mission: Impossible installment.
Rockwell's character lives in a historic mansion filled with stuffed exotic animals—a Victorian natural history museum aesthetic—yet worries obsessively about his scrawny pet cat. He is deeply concerned with money above all else, caring least about the environment. His half-sister, a green-energy entrepreneur played by Sandra Hüller, appears underused in the narrative. The BBC notes that nothing in Digger is subtle; most viewers won't attend, and some who do may leave halfway through. Yet this divisiveness doesn't signal failure—it signals a film content to be exactly what it is: hectoring, challenging, and entirely uninterested in conventional entertainment.