DIGGER

Tom Cruise Digs Deep In A Wildly Ambitious Satire

He helped create the disaster. Now the most powerful man in the world wants everyone to believe he’s the only man who can save them.

Tom Cruise has spent decades saving the world on screen, but Digger (2026) turns that heroic image spectacularly upside down. Directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, this outrageous dark comedy casts Cruise as Digger Rockwell, an eccentric billionaire oil tycoon whose staggering wealth is matched only by his ego.

When Rockwell’s reckless business activities contribute to a potentially catastrophic environmental disaster, he doesn’t simply accept responsibility. Instead, he launches a frantic campaign to convince humanity that he is its saviour.

It’s an inspired role for Cruise.

Gone is the immaculately controlled Ethan Hunt persona. Cruise disappears beneath thinning white hair, prosthetics and a padded body, giving Rockwell an almost grotesque physical presence. He is bombastic, ridiculous and frequently unlikeable, yet Cruise commits so completely that it becomes difficult to look away.

The movie’s central joke is also its sharpest criticism: extraordinarily powerful people can help create enormous problems and then reinvent themselves as heroes promising the solution.

Iñárritu doesn’t approach that idea gently. Digger is deliberately excessive, mixing political satire, environmental catastrophe, absurdist comedy and drama. At 129 minutes, the ambition occasionally works against it. Some sequences feel overextended, while the satire can be so emphatic that subtlety disappears completely.

Yet being restrained was clearly never the intention.

Cruise delivers his most unusual performance in years, including a remarkable extended monologue filmed as a single take. Rather than relying on motorcycles, aircraft or death-defying stunts, he is challenged here by character, dialogue and physical transformation.

The supporting cast is formidable. Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Hüller, Michael Stuhlbarg and Jesse Plemons appear alongside Sophie Wilde, Emma D’Arcy, Robert John Burke and Burn Gorman. Hüller is particularly effective opposite Cruise, while the ensemble helps give Rockwell’s increasingly bizarre world credibility.

Visually, Digger is extraordinary. Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, whose credits include Birdman, Gravity and The Revenant, shot the entire production in VistaVision. The larger film format contributes tremendous scale and texture, particularly when Rockwell’s extravagant existence collides with environmental destruction.

Another interesting fact is that Digger marks Iñárritu’s first English-language feature since The Revenant. Cruise also serves as a producer, while Iñárritu co-wrote the screenplay with Alexander Dinelaris, Nicolás Giacobone and Sabina Berman.

Digger won’t please everybody. Its tonal shifts are aggressive, its satire occasionally heavy-handed and its determination to be strange may frustrate audiences expecting another conventional Cruise blockbuster.

But conventional is precisely what this isn’t.

For Australian audiences, Digger opens October 1, 2026, with screenings including Palace Byron Bay and Ballina Fair Cinemas.

RATING: ★★★★☆ — 4/5

Verdict: Bold, bizarre and deliberately divisive, Digger sometimes collapses beneath the weight of its own ambitions. Yet Cruise’s fearless performance and Iñárritu’s visual audacity make it fascinating cinema rather than comfortable entertainment.