At least critically, DIGGER may be the year’s most polarizing film. This critic is a bit torn himself. While I enjoyed much of it, particularly Tom Cruise’s no-holds-barred, raucous lead performance, as well as the detailed efforts of what director Alejandro Iñárritu was going for here, it doesn’t all gel. Still, it’s a noteworthy attempt, a frequently hilarious farce, and a cryptic warning about the dangers of climate change. Unfortunately, it mostly uses a sledgehammer, rather than a scalpel.
Part of the problem is that when filmmakers do social satire commenting on current events, they very often feel the need to go big and broad to make their points. I think comedy that announces itself as “comedy” every second, including over-the-top performances, exaggerated art direction, and even tilted camera angles to make it cartoonish, is comedy that is trying way too hard to be funny.
Iñárritu and his fellow screenwriters, Sabrina Berman, Alexander Dinelaris Jr., and Nicolas Giacobone, clearly feel that the problem of climate change needs the bell rung long and emphatically, but it doesn’t need to be that way every second of a film. Comedy needs breathing room, and there is precious little here, as everyone acts with a capital A and the filmmaking is so self-conscious it nudges you out of the story and into what feels like a stunt.
Tom Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, a wealthy, obnoxious oil tycoon who finds himself in a heap of trouble when one of his monstrous oil refineries breaks Greenland apart into massive floating icebergs heading towards the shores of Europe. Because some of these ice blocks are the size of a major city, they will spell catastrophe and annihilate land and entire populations in their wake.
But the story’s trajectory shows less interest in what can be done about the impending doom and more in who is to blame. The arguing turns into one long shouting match, with finger-pointing from the panicked President (a strident John Goodman) to a nervous Nelly aide (a goofy Riz Ahmed) to various political advisors played by veteran character actors Michael Stuhlbarg, Robert John Burke, and Burn Gorman.
It’s funny because all these actors, including Sandra Huller as Digger’s harried half-sister, are the type of pros who usually underplay their parts, but here they’re all encouraged to swing for the fences. Cruise acquits himself well, disappearing completely into the guise of the crotchety rich jerk he’s playing, hidden from head to toe under old-age makeup. He shines in one scene in particular where Digger’s forced to defend his greed and boneheaded decisions before a world council, and Iñárritu showcases Cruise’s star power by filming it in a swirling single take.
But the film’s bravado starts to repeat itself from one noisy scene to the next. We see the world start to wash away, and everyone still bellows. Some of it is funny; a lot of it is just loud. At times, it feels like a vamp of the director’s camera flourishes and energy of his Oscar-winning dark comedy BIRDMAN. At other times, it feels like it wants to be a modern-day DR. STRANGELOVE. Both films had breathing room though and some well-placed subtlety, too. You may remember Peter Sellers’ caricatured title character as an ex-Nazi in a wheelchair whose right arm kept saluting his former Führer, but the acclaimed actor also played a British army officer and a United States President in Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece much more realistically. There is little realism here; everything is designed to keep underlining the ridiculous and the nasty.
I don’t want to give away the twists or the ending, but the final act and denouement are the film’s most daring volley, vividly showing what the world ends up doing about this outrageous crisis. Because that part of the film was so provocative and daring, I will recommend it, but be prepared: this whole shebang is a noble but often fraught exercise.
Making fun of politics has become the bread and butter of a lot of show biz, from Jimmy Kimmel to SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE to Oscar-nominated Best Pictures like DON’T LOOK UP from 2021. Perhaps filmmakers feel the need to up the ante when tackling the genre for the big screen, but it would do them good to take a page from the brilliant and hilarious HBO comedy VEEP, which showcased just as much asinine behavior and pointed satire without making every piece of it writ large as a punchline. The show was shot documentary-style to give it the air of reality, and some performances were broad, while others were far from it. It had balance, and this comedy needs at least some of that characteristic.
DIGGER, Cruise and crew give every moment of this film their all, and on one level, they deserve plaudits. But when comedy labors so to be effective, you feel the strain, and it’s not great. It’s grating.
