Tom Cruise is unrecognizable under prosthetic makeup as Digger Rockwell, a balding, greying, paunchy oil baron who bears little resemblance to the ageless action hero audiences know. The transformation is so extreme that it marks the biggest risk of his career—not a stunt injury, but the risk of being called pretentious and self-indulgent, or of being associated with a potential flop.
Director Alejandro G Iñárritu, who made Birdman and The Revenant, has created what BBC calls the "weirdest film" Cruise has ever made. The satirical comedy is a divisive, conceptually challenging eco-satire that is unlikely to be mistaken for Mission: Impossible. Most viewers won't go to see it, and some who do may walk out halfway through. The Guardian calls it "the most disappointing film of the year," while BBC gives it four stars, praising high-concept twists beneath the bizarre surface.
The plot centers on Rockwell's irresponsible drilling practices in the Arctic. When his chief scientist Ganesh warns him that a vast ice floe—many times the size of Manhattan—has broken away and is moving toward Norway's coast with the force of a nuclear attack, Rockwell remains aggressively unrepentant. He crashes a White House crisis meeting with the President to make his case. Cruise even appears in underwear as a cheeky homage to his breakthrough film Risky Business, while his character's mansion is decorated with more stuffed exotic animals than a Victorian museum—despite his deep worry over his scrawny pet cat.