Tom Cruise spent four decades as the biggest movie star on the planet by playing heroes audiences could cheer for. In Digger, he plays something far stranger, and the reaction is proving just as strange. Alejandro G. Iñárritu's new comedy hits theaters today, and the first wave of reviews is divided with unusual ferocity - some critics calling Cruise's performance his most fearless work in years, others dismissing the film as an insufferable exercise in self-indulgence.
The film sits at 8.1/10 on TMDb, but that aggregate figure conceals a chasm. Digger runs 129 minutes and stars Cruise as Digger Rockwell, described in the official synopsis as "the most powerful man in the world," who embarks on a frantic mission to prove he is humanity's savior before the disaster he's unleashed destroys everything. It is a comedy, and that fact alone has thrown some reviewers.
A 180-Degree Turn for Cruise
The casting is the story. Iñárritu, the Mexican filmmaker behind Birdman and The Revenant, has taken the most reliable action star of his generation and placed him at the center of a satire. Cruise plays a man of immense power who believes he alone can rescue the world from a catastrophe of his own making - a premise that invites obvious comparisons to real-world figures, and critics have not been shy about drawing them.
The supporting cast is unusually deep for a comedy. Riz Ahmed appears as Ganesh, with John Goodman as President Compson. Sandra Hüller plays Emma, Michael Stuhlbarg is the Vice President, Jesse Plemons plays Kenny, Robert John Burke is Fitzgerald and Emma D'Arcy rounds out the ensemble as Lena. It is the kind of roster that signals awards ambition, which makes the split reaction all the more awkward for a studio hoping for a clean narrative heading into the fall corridor.
The Praise
The reviews that work, work hard. Several critics have framed Cruise's turn as a deliberate demolition of the persona he built across Top Gun, Mission: Impossible and decades of blockbusters. In their reading, Digger Rockwell is not a hero but a void - a man whose conviction that he is indispensable masks a total absence of self-awareness - and Cruise commits to the ugliness rather than winking at the audience.
For these reviewers, the film's comedy is inseparable from its contempt for its protagonist, and Iñárritu's control of tone is the reason it holds together. They point to the runtime as evidence of confidence rather than indulgence, arguing that the director earns his 129 minutes by escalating rather than repeating. In this camp, Digger is a terrifically acidic entertainment and Cruise's most interesting performance since he stopped needing to be liked.
The Damnation
The other half of the critical corps has been scathing. Their central charge is that the film mistakes volume for insight - that a satire about a powerful man convinced of his own savior status has nothing to say beyond the observation that such men exist. Reviewers in this group have described the experience as exhausting, and the word "insufferable" has attached itself to the conversation around both the character and, for some, the filmmaking.
Skeptics also question whether Cruise is doing anything beyond playing a heightened version of his own public image. Where admirers see fearless self-critique, detractors see a star being flattered for allowing himself to be photographed unflatteringly. Iñárritu's stylistic flourishes, meanwhile, have been read by some as frantic rather than controlled - a charge that echoes the film's own synopsis about a frantic mission.
What the Divide Means
Split reactions are not unusual for Iñárritu, whose work has always polarized, and they are not fatal for a movie with awards-season designs. A genuine argument can be more useful than uniform praise, provided audiences show up to participate in it. The 8.1 TMDb rating suggests early viewers are landing closer to the enthusiastic camp, though that figure reflects a self-selecting group and will likely shift.
The bigger question is commercial. Cruise has spent his career in films where the audience knows exactly what they are buying. Digger asks them to buy something else: a comedy, from a director with a taste for provocation, in which their favorite star plays a man they may well despise. Whether that gamble pays off will not be settled by critics who cannot agree among themselves. It will be settled by whether moviegoers are curious enough to watch Tom Cruise fall apart on purpose - and whether they find it terrific or simply unbearable.
Digger is in theaters now.
Source: Hollywood Reporter
