I have been dancing around how I was going to write this review for a week. I thought I was going to do a non-spoiler review and then, later, a spoiler review, to be extra careful with the experience for readers.
But this morning, the review embargo broke and a wave of negative reviews, some from favored critics, rolled out and I started reading them and found myself deeply confused by what they thought they saw. And so… this is just going to be my review… spoilers are part of it… it’s really just one big one. In fact, I am going to avoid all of the 3rd-act spoilers… but I am going to give away the huge twist. And maybe some people are better off knowing what’s coming rather than processing it for the first time in the theater. You, as always, will be the judge for yourself.
Digger opens with the opening of theater curtains… a fact that just seems like an ironic touch, bedroom curtains in the style of theater curtains, when it happens in the film. But about 30 minutes into the film, we will find out that it wasn’t ironic, it was literal. The movie is set inside a 25th anniversary production of a popular and what is claimed to be a factually historic play, Fossil Fools, about the fall of society as we knew it. The primary world of the movie is a 4th-walled final dress rehearsal with full tech of the play. The major twist is that the production breaks that 4th wall more and more and more as the film goes along, revealing it to be layers deep.
The giant, over-the-top character of Digger, based on a real person in the life of the movie, is brought to life by Tom Cruise, who plays the character and also the actor, Curtis Markson, playing the character.
A lot of how people seem to feel about the movie has to do with their interest or willingness to make the transition between the 2 sides of the 4th wall.
For me, even more so the 2nd time around, knowing what was coming, it is a masterful turn. People have been caught up in comparisons to Dr. Strangelove since the 2nd trailer debuted. But besides asking too much of any movie, it’s also a bad comparison. Not only did Dr. Strangelove never break the 4th wall, it also leaned heavily on a very specific and clear premise that was also depicted in both the book ‘Red Alert’ (1958) and the book ‘Fail Safe’ (1962) at the height of the cold war. Dr. Strangelove was released early in 1964 and the serious version, the movie Fail Safe, was released later the same year. Both were hits. Anyway… my point is that the story structure of Strangelove is nothing like Digger if you think about it for more than a minute. (The screenwriting team here is Sabina Berman, Alexander Dinelaris, Nicolás Giacobone, and Alejandro G. Iñárritu.)
The 2 things the 2 projects truly share are, 1) that there is a Greek chorus of governmental “yes” men who are in the background of a lot of the action, and 2) that the events of the story are/were not completely unrealistic, both in the screw-ups that occur to create a threat to humanity, but also in how powerful figures react in the. midst of the crisis.
Fossil Fools is about a moment in history when efforts to get more and more oil out of places better left without aggressive oil exploration leads to true catastrophe. The opening of the movie, before the curtains rise, are bubbles… little bubbles… increasing in quantity and size… a seemingly tiny element ultimately threatening the entire world.
Too soon, Wuhan?
Digger is seemingly a larger-than-life character. But is he? Maybe my feelings about this movie are somehow complicated by seeing the 4-hour documentary, Musk, or seeing the daily news that AI could kill most human life on earth before my kid sees 40 or by watching the President of the United States of America failing day after day after day, making the country worse for the average American and better for the $100-million-and-better class while screaming every single day that the country’s doing great, that everyone loves him, and that any negativity is fake news.
Be clear. I don’t think Digger is a movie about Donald Trump. But it is certainly a movie about Donald Trumps.
How far is John Goodman’s President Compson from the current office holder? Well, he is capable of seeing reality. He is more LBJ than DJT. Apparently, some critics find it displeasuring to have a president character talk about his anus because that is so much worse than a president who keeps insisting that no one knew there was a “b” in “dumb” and that every vanity project he wants is somehow a military necessity. (Clutch those pearls!)
But the entire world of Digger/Fossil Fools is basically about the super-powerful doing what they feel they must to stay super-powerful… even more so, to keep convincing themselves that they have earned their place and deserve to keep it, knowing better than all those, ugh, billions of people out there.
Early on in the film, Digget is forced to confront the likely death of his beloved cat, Maggie. He has flown in the top veterinarian in the world to offer a prognosis, which is not a good one. Digger’s reaction is to sent the vet away and call in his personal physician, who knows nothing about cats. Why? “He’s not afraid of disappointing me.”
That is what Digger is about, on the top level. If you don’t see the humor and horror and current reality of American leadership in that, you’re not going to care for the movie.
And here is something else that I think is putting many critics off of this film… it doesn’t let us off the hook. I don’t want to give away 3rd act secrets about the film and I won’t. But the screenplay keeps going back to the idea that we, as the mob, are complicit in our own potential destruction.
Perhaps the highlight of the movie is a 10-minute speech by Digger, shot as a one-er, backed into a corner of responsibility for disasters he has been party to, in which he does his best to convince the world that they should stop looking at him and look in the mirror.
What is hard for the audience is that the screenplay is pointing right at us all… and if you are in what logically is the core audience for this film, left wingers, many of who will be driving an EV or a hybrid to the theater, the response is often going to be a rousing, “FUCK YOU!!! It’s not MY fault!!! Blame the Trump voters!!!”
In the “real world” side of the movie, dealing with the theatrical production and the response to it, the public is absolutely rabid in their hate for Digger and all the other major characters in the story. Seeing Fossil Fools is a release of this rage, once again focusing on Digger and how he did what he did to them. But the movie is also relentless about forcing us to look inward, whether we are okay with that or not.
And that is why I think Digger is a masterpiece that so many, including a hypersensitive left, doesn’t know they need.
Of course, Digger and Presient Compson and even Riz Ahmed’s super-scientist Ganesh are directly responsible in so many ways for the horrors they are helping inflict on the world. But dare I remind you that the reason we have had our worse-than-Compson in office for 6 years already is that Democrats didn’t show up and vote in full force for the Democrat presidential candidate in 2016 or 2024. We can blame the people who love Trump all we like… but we didn’t do our part to stop him, as a group. We let his fanbase, whatever we think of them, win the day by our under-performance as a voting block.
The “real life” side of the movie is relatively brief and subtle, though it delivers some major hard hits late in the film. That said, it delivers all the real humanity that the cartoon of Digger and Compson and Co are performing like the ultimate panto. Be clear, there has never been a live stage performance as complex and visually remarkable as what we kind-of see in this movie… which is also exhilarating.
Aside from the big picture issues of the film, the “real life” side is as intimate and small and real as the “production” is not. Actors being actors. Families being families. Production being production. This will be tied together with another long monologue - the movie has 4 - by Jesse Plemons, though I won’t explain how in this review. But it’s great (likewise Riz Ahmed and John Goodman).
Digger is a punch in the face. And it is as subtle, most of the time, as a punch in the face. And I am down with that.
Unlike many - and I hate that I am responding to other critics with this review, but… - I did not walk into the movie theater with expectations and then get thrown off of my expectations, unwilling to rebuild to the reality of what the film is. It’s not Dr. Strangelove. It’s not The China Syndrome. It’s certainly not The Odyssey.
Digger is a singularity this year. There is no other major American production demanding as much of the audience as this film demands. Ride with it or get run over.
Beware of critics who lead with an analysis of Tom Cruise and his career or who want to explain to you what he and Alejandro G. Iñárritu really want you to feel. If a film critic mentions the budget on a movie, they are discussing something other than the movie itself. That is not film criticism. That is naval gazing.
I’m not saying that I am looking down my nose at everyone who doesn’t fall in love with this movie. Taste is taste is taste.It is more than possible to hate the tone of the piece and the overall style of performance and to check out and not want to be there.
But for me, like all Iñárritu movies, this movie screams for my close, careful attention. It is about how we live in this world… not just today… not just under Trump… not just in the area of the ecology of the planet. This is a movie that doesn’t compliment us for being a “woke mob” or a “right wing mob.” There is only 1 billionaire in the movie… it’s not about hating billionaires. It’s not about hating Trump. There is always someone and has always been someoenes with the most power who can use it in ways that seem unimaginable to us… who are so full of themselves that they think they can’t fail and that when they do, their failures only affect them and mostly their egos… who think their imagination is real enough to save the world.
Digger is, easily, the most demanding major studio release of 2026 (so far, at least) and you don’t have to want that. Without exaggerating, it may take 2 or 3 views to really get what it is. And I get that a lot of people think movies should give you everything in one view, no more views needed to get there fully. It’s is undeniable that Kubrick and The Coen Bros and Iñárritu are not those kinds of filmmakers… for better or worse.
Am I saying that the movie is perfect?
What is perfect? You have to want what the movie is delivering… not just complicated movies, but all movies. Out standards of quality are deeply connected to our very personal taste.
Digger deserves a LOT more than, “It was a big swing… and they missed.” It may be that for you. And you have the right to feel as you feel. But please, as always, let the movie come to you instead of going in, loaded down by expectations.
It is easily the best performance of Tom Cruise’s career. He delivers on multiple levels.
The casting and those actors who were cast are about as perfect as can be.
The below-the-line work is exceptional… truly top of the class.
Of course, what really matters is the movie… a movie that doesn’t allow its audience to just keep whistling past the graveyard… though really, it has an answer to that too. You jut have to listen carefully. Bang, bang, bang!
Until tomorrow…