First, the bad news, and sadly there's plenty of it for Alejandro G. Iñárritu's "Digger." The film is getting blasted by critics, sitting at 44 on Metacritic and 53% on Rotten Tomatoes. Its Oscar odds have all but collapsed.
It gets worse. Box office tracking for "Digger" continues to freefall, with the latest numbers pointing to a potential opening under $10M this weekend on 3,500+ screens nationwide. Yikes. And while Warner Bros. claims a $135M budget, some are saying the real figure is much higher, maybe $180M or more.
The good news, which won't change a damn thing when it comes to those numbers, is that I actually liked "Digger." It's such a crazy proposition for a major studio release with a budget that size that I'm totally bewildered as to how Warner Bros. greenlit it. In essence, it's a troll job masquerading as a serious Oscar contender.
How do you review "Digger" without giving away the twist that arrives 30 minutes in? It wasn't in the trailers, and it's central to everything the film is doing. I won't spoil it here. If you really want to know, it's out there and easy to find.
The story being marketed follows Cruise as Digger Rockwell, a Texas tycoon whose rig causes a catastrophic spill that threatens a global disaster. Digger sets off on a chaotic, wildly over-the-top mission to save the world, meeting with the planet's most powerful figures, including Goodman's U.S. president.
That's technically, sort of, the "plot," and it does carry the film from beginning to end. But the twist changes how we experience everything that unfolds, turning an apocalyptic movie into a case of art imitating life. Without the twist, the story alone wouldn't have worked nearly as well for me.
What I will say is that critics are being far too hard on this movie. "Digger" is a big, bold, ambitious swing. It has stunning visuals, great performances, a jaw-dropping 10-minute oner, a terrific Tom Cruise, and in its own unpredictable way it holds your attention right up to the final frame.
On a technical level, it's spectacular. Emmanuel Lubezki's gray-toned cinematography is thick with mood, and the production design is endlessly inventive. This is pitch-black comedy, "Dr. Strangelove" filtered through 21st-century theatrics, a post-modern riff on Kubrick's classic. John Goodman plays the U.S. president with a loopy energy that feels lifted from one of his Coen brothers movie. The whole thing benefits enormously from a cast and crew who are fully committed and rallying behind Iñárritu's vision.
And that's going to be the deal-breaker for a lot of people: Iñárritu. I hated "Bardo," which I found ponderous and pretentious, and some critics are using those same words for "Digger." I found it to be the opposite. It's gutsy and unapologetic, an adventurous oddity that plays by no one's rules, which is exactly why it'll turn plenty of viewers off.
"Digger" somehow takes itself far too seriously and not seriously at all. It's a schizoid vision with dozens of spinning narratives that don't always land, and at times it seems to go out of its way to be hard to love. But that messiness is precisely what makes it such a fascinating watch.
In the “doc,” Seyfried appears in the dramatized reenactments of moments that were never filmed. Is that a performance or a documentary device? The awards bodies can't agree.