Who is Digger?
The combination of an innovative Oscar winning director (Alejandro G Inarritu) and the World’s biggest A-list star (Tom Cruise) would mean anticipation is high for their new film, Digger. That title character as played by Cruise is an ageing paunchy Texan oil tycoon interested in two things : his billion dollar oil drilling company and his cat, an ageing, moth eaten, mange riddled incontinent ( ironically our editor’s Tindr profile – ‘You’re fired!’ – Ed) that’s at death’s door.
Waking up in his palatial mansion news reaches him that his company’s irresponsible drilling has caused an ice floe several times the size on Manhattan has broken off and is heading towards Europe where it will cause catastrophic devastation that will have repercussions for the whole world.
Hell unleashed
Digger’s influence is far and wide and gets him a seat at the tables of the US President Compson (John Goodman) and his top brass. It’s Digger’s top scientist Ganesh (Riz Ahmed) who has made his boss aware that after all his previous warnings regarding went ignored the blame lies with Digger who in turn puts the blame at the President’s door for having granted him endless subsidies and jurisdiction to carry out drilling. It’s delivered in the films best scene with Digger lambasting a kind of US Parliament of grey suits berating and hectoring him the essence of which is their hypocrisy having been complicit in allowing him to drill, now chastise him but are still addicted to using all the devices that his oil allows. It’s the films best scene even if it doesn’t have a stand out, ‘Show me the money’ phrase. With the film taking an unexpected left turn there’s echoes of Trump in Goodman’s President and Inarritu’s experimental style combines the cinematic and theatrical but to often initially confusing effect.
See it?
Digger has been trumpeted as Cruise’s big Oscar shot but it is more likely that Riz Ahmed, now something of a national treasure, who’s likely to score a nomination along with the production design. Goodman is good but Sandra Huller, Jesse Plemons and Emma D’arcy feel wasted
Like ‘Don’t Look Up’ and it’s all star cast led by Leonardo DiCaprio this is another overlong big budget attempt to address the increasingly urgent need to save the climate but there’s something indulgent, occasionally heavy handed and ultimately both unsatisfactory and anti-climatic. But there will be others who will revel in it and what is certain is that Digger will undoubtedly be the year’s most divisive film.
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Here’s the trailer…..
