Filmfare's review says the oil-tycoon satire trades nostalgia for a surreal Iñárritu fever dream, and warns that going in expecting a victory lap is the wrong move entirely.
The trailer sold nostalgia. Cruise sprinting, Cruise flying, Cruise doing all the things that made him Cruise, cut together like a career victory lap. Filmfare's review of Digger says that's not remotely the film you're getting.
Tom Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, an American oil tycoon whose capitalist greed is quietly wrecking the planet even as he casts himself as its saviour. That's the plot, according to Filmfare. But the review is clear that the marketing around Digger and the movie itself barely know each other. This, it says, is an Alejandro González Iñárritu film through and through, with what the reviewer calls a distinct Wes Anderson hangover running through its production design.
The ensemble is stacked. Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Hüller and Michael Stuhlbarg all feature, and Filmfare singles out the supporting performances as a genuine highlight even as it struggles with the film's bigger swings.
And the film swings big. Filmfare's review calls it a satire, a farce, slapstick, dark comedy and straight surrealism, often in the same scene, and says Digger never quite settles on which one it wants to be. The verdict lands somewhere between admiration and exhaustion. "This film is a hot, beautiful, surreal mess," the review says, adding that it's never incomprehensible, just relentlessly unconventional across its two-hour runtime.
The comparison Filmfare reaches for is a big one: Dr. Strangelove. Not a film most reviews drop lightly. The piece says Digger walks close to that territory without quite matching it, and that the closest company it keeps is David Lynch, Maya Deren, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Terry Gilliam rather than any other Cruise film in his own filmography.
Which is exactly the trap, per the review. Walk in expecting the trailer's version of Tom Cruise and you'll leave with what Filmfare describes as a WTF aftertaste. Walk in ready for Iñárritu's audacious mess, and the review says the payoff is a genuinely bleak, gut-punch statement on human nature, the kind that argues humanity will keep its worst habits going even after it's wrecked the planet that hosts them.
Social chatter around Digger has been split along similar lines since it started screening, with some posts online dismissing the film's stranger instincts outright and others invoking Jodorowsky in the same breath as a compliment. Filmfare's review, doesn't disagree with either camp. It just insists both are watching the same film for different reasons.
Filmfare has also reported separately that Iñárritu shot the entire film in VistaVision, a format choice that tracks with just how deliberately Digger seems to be avoiding the conventional Cruise blockbuster playbook. Whether that commitment to strangeness translates into audience turnout is the next question, and one the box office numbers will answer soon enough.
Be the first to comment
Join the argument. No password, just your email or a passkey.