Digger is the most important movie of the century, but I can't tell you why

Tom Cruise’s new movie Digger is not what it seems. The trailers for Alejandro González Iñárritu's dark comedy all hide several big twists and reveals that are much more fun and interesting to talk about than the version of this movie that's being marketed to you (still, no, it’s not a secret musical).

But because this is a spoiler-free review, per an embargo I agreed to in order to see the film, I can't talk about any of that stuff. Thankfully, there’s still plenty to talk about in this overwhelming, overly ambitious apocalypse comedy.

On the surface, Iñárritu tells the story of Digger Rockwell (Cruise), a blustering oil baron who unleashes an apocalyptic disaster on Earth in the form of a massive chunk of the Greenland ice sheet headed for Northern Europe. Digger then races to avert it (sort of). Working with a team of top scientists and government officials, he considers every option, from nuking the iceberg to an AI-powered information blackout. Ultimately, when faced with the reality that there are no good solutions and he is entirely to blame, Digger goes on the offensive — not against the iceberg, but against its victims.

In transparently grappling with climate change and the bleak reality that the Earth's future rests in the hands of a dozen rich white guys with very little interest in saving the planet if it cuts into their profits, Digger is funny, but not necessarily fun. It's a pitch-black comedy with an even darker message that may just knock the wind out of you — even if some of those spoilery twists I'm not allowed to talk about actually do more to undercut Iñárritu's main point than reinforce it.

Image: Warner Bros. Discover

Cruise, gear-shifting out of action hero mode for the first time since 2017’s American Made (which still saw him flying an airplane), puts on a hell of a show as Digger Rockwell. He's blustering and boisterous in a way the actor hasn't been onscreen since he played the grotesque Hollywood executive Les Grossman in 2008's Tropic Thunder. Combine Grossman's over-the-top bravado and elaborate prosthetics with the unhinged aging cowboy energy of the "Rich Texan" character from The Simpsons, and you've got Digger, a man so powerful and self-assured he's convinced he can talk his way out of any situation.

Cruise rises to that challenge, delivering monologue after enthralling monologue designed to pummel everyone else into submission, whether that's some low-level scientist warning him of impending climate disaster or the President of the United States of America. How far does Cruise go to make an impression? In one early scene, we see his (prosthetically expanded) butt crack. Later, Digger wriggles out of culpability with a blistering speech about the undeniable allure of fossil fuel as he struts, jumps, and kicks his way across a courtroom full of angry politicians.

Speaking of the POTUS, John Goodman easily rises to Cruise's level as the Donald Trump-inspired President Compton. The president's actual politics don't matter much to the movie, but the way his cabinet swarms around him like eager yes men, only to break into a prayer that describes Compton as an emissary of God, removes any doubt about whom Iñárritu's movie is really focused on. Goodman isn't particularly channeling Trump in his performance, either. He's just using everything at his disposal to match Cruise beat-for-beat in a contest to see who can be the loudest and crudest while still maintaining a veneer of authority. It's a close contest, but Goodman comes out on top.

Image: Warner Bros. Discover

Also ready to spar with Cruise is Riz Ahmed as Dr. Ganesh, a scientist in charge of safety at Digger's ill-fated Greenland oil-drilling operation. Where Compton mostly serves to rile Cruise's character up, Ganesh is there in an attempt to drag him back down to Earth. One quiet moment, where the two characters fly across the Atlantic Ocean on a private jet to deliver some bad news, gets to the heart of what this movie is all about: Digger goads his vegan employee into eating a piece of delicious raw fatty tuna. Like Ganesh's beliefs in the face of Digger's obnoxious swagger, our collective, individual efforts to save the planet amount to nothing when the most powerful people don't give a shit. As Ganesh becomes increasingly unhinged in the final act of the movie, his performance reaches levels of absurdity not even Cruise can match as a rigid scientist finally cedes control and starts drinking anything alcoholic in sight.

While Digger's cast is large and impressive (Sandra Hüller, Jesse Plemons, and Emma D'Arcy all pull their weight while sprinting to keep up), it's really that core trio doing most of the heavy lifting, with several entourages trailing behind each of them. Admittedly, this does mean Digger is (mostly) just three men yelling at each other for two hours. Your mileage may vary, but it's some of the finest dudes yelling you're likely to see in a movie theater this year.

Image: Warner Bros. Discover

Digger, thanks to production design by Dennis Gassner and Richard Johnson, also looks like nothing else you’ll see this year. When we first meet Digger Rockwell, he's waking up in bed and looking out the window at a palatial garden full of perfectly manicured trees and flowing mist. His aging white-haired cat meows beside him, and Digger picks it up to reveal a ghastly, animatronic puppet like something from one of Jim Henson's less kid-friendly movies. Each location and room is carefully designed to feel both imposing in its grandeur and surreal in its fakeness; Gassner and Johnson combine the obsessive detail of Wes Anderson with the slap-dash creativity of Michel Gondry to achieve something uniquely uncanny. We know that what we're looking at isn't real, that none of this was shot on location in an actual mansion or aboard Air Force One, but that only makes the message at the heart of Iñárritu's story all the more effective.

From the plot to the shouty dialogue to the scenery to the twists, everything about Digger is pointing in the same damning direction: the Earth is screwed, and anyone with the power to stop it stopped caring decades ago. It's a brutal thesis, but a pretty appropriate one in 2026, when the news keeps getting worse and the people in charge keep stepping on the gas. But while it's easy to point fingers, Iñárritu isn't doing that either. Digger Rockwell isn't a stand-in for Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or some unnamed oil tycoon. He represents capitalism itself — unrestrained, unstoppable, and unwilling to admit to even the slightest mistake.

It's more than a little ironic that it took a mega-wealthy Hollywood star to make a movie like this one with a protagonist like Rockwell Digger. But if that's what it takes, then so be it. Digger probably won't succeed by any of the financial or critical standards that capitalism has decided matter for a movie like this one, but that's probably for the best when Iñárritu seems determined to reject all those things as vehemently as possible.

When Digger does arrive in theaters, and we can finally talk spoilers, then the fun debates and discussions about this movie will truly begin.

Digger arrives in theaters on Oct. 2.