It’s judgment day for Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Digger, which stars Tom Cruise as an elderly oil magnate who triggers a potentially apocalyptic event. It’s the star’s biggest swing as an actor in nearly twenty years, since he last donned prosthetics as Len Grossman in Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder, but the reception from critics has been dire. The film is being attacked with such vitriol that the studio has actually pivoted its marketing campaign to feature the negative reviews as a kind of badge of honour. Box office-wise, this movie is considered DOA, with the $130 million movie unlikely to make much over $10 million this weekend, despite getting The Odyssey’s IMAX screens (expect Nolan’s epic to be back on those screens soon).
But is it as bad as all that? As someone who actually saw the movie, I can’t help but feel like a lot of the attacks on the movie are personal, as if some critics are going out of their way to knock Tom Cruise and director Alejandro G. Iñárritu down a peg. On X, director Guillermo del Toro pointed out how mean-spirited the attacks have been, taking issue with an IGN headline that implored audiences NOT to see it in theaters. He responded, “Entirely Petty headline. Love it or not. And, yes, I do. The film delivers in scale, ambition and reach at a theatrical screen level. Daring, bold and Cinematically complex. Decidedly a Theatrical experience.”
He also compared its reception to Ken Russell’s The Devils, which the same company, WB, is re-releasing this month, writing, “BTW there is a ‘climate change’ movie in release that Is NOT about climate change but the manipulation of narratives – and yes it is released by WB (possiblybthe very last movie WB as such will ever release) and has been deemed ‘excesive, overbaring’ so- see it in a theatre…”
I was kinder to it in my review than most, giving it a 7/10. While I think a narrative twist about forty-five minutes in was ill-conceived, I appreciate how big of a swing it was, and while the film itself can be criticized, I think Cruise’s performance is absolutely brilliant.
At any rate, now that the movie is screening, we want to know what our readers thought of it. So make sure to chime in below in the comments and let us know.