Digger (2026) Review: Iñárritu's Wild Tom Cruise Epic

Tom Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, the most powerful man in the world - and, in a neat bit of doubling, also Curtis Markson, a figure whose exact relationship to Digger the film takes its time revealing. Digger has unleashed a catastrophe, and now he's racing against his own creation, desperate to prove he is humanity's savior before the clock runs out. Riz Ahmed's Ganesh serves as conscience and foil, while John Goodman's President Compson presides over a government that's mostly reacting, rarely leading. Sandra Hüller's Emma and Emma D'Arcy's Lena bring an emotional gravity that keeps the satire from floating away entirely, and Michael Stuhlbarg's Vice President and Jesse Plemons's Kenny populate a world of functionaries scrambling beneath a man who believes he's a god.

If that sounds like a lot, it is. Iñárritu stacks plots like he's building a monument, and the screenplay (working in the key of farce as much as tragedy) keeps finding new ways to escalate.

The first thing to say about "Digger" is that Cruise is doing something genuinely new here. The movie-star intensity that has defined four decades of his career gets repurposed into a portrait of self-mythology run amok. Digger isn't a hero; he's a man performing heroism so hard he's lost the thread of what's real. Cruise plays the delusion straight, and that's what makes it funny - and then, in the back half, quietly devastating. It's a performance that trusts the audience to laugh before it asks them to grieve.

Iñárritu directs with characteristic bravura. The disaster sequences are visceral without being indulgent, and the film's rhythm - frantic, then suddenly still, then frantic again - mirrors its protagonist's unravelling. There's a recurring visual motif of Digger framed against vast, indifferent landscapes, a man shrinking even as he insists on his own grandeur. The comedy lands more often than it misses, though Iñárritu occasionally confuses volume with wit.

The supporting ensemble is uniformly sharp. Ahmed is the film's moral spine, grounded and weary in a way that cuts through the noise. Goodman brings a weary, avuncular cynicism to the presidency that feels unnervingly plausible. Hüller and D'Arcy add the film's only moments of genuine tenderness. Stuhlbarg and Plemons, meanwhile, are clearly having a great time as men who've made peace with the absurdity around them.

Where "Digger" stumbles is in its length and its instincts. At 129 minutes, the middle stretch sags under the weight of its own ideas, and Iñárritu never quite solves the tonal puzzle he sets for himself - the shift from satire to sincerity can feel like a gear-grind. There are scenes that would be more powerful trimmed, and a few that feel like they belong to a different movie entirely. The film wants to be both a biting critique and an earnest human drama, and it doesn't always earn both.

Still, when it works, "Digger" is thrilling in a way few studio films dare to be. It swings for something uncomfortable and unresolved, and it trusts its star to carry the contradictions.

Pros

• Tom Cruise's most daring and self-aware performance in years
• Iñárritu's direction is visually inventive and emotionally ambitious
• A stellar supporting cast, especially Ahmed, Goodman, and Hüller
• Sharp, uncomfortable satire that doesn't chase easy targets

Cons

• Overlong, with a sagging middle act
• Tonal shifts between comedy and drama don't always land
• Occasionally mistakes bombast for depth

"Digger" is imperfect, unruly, and impossible to dismiss. Iñárritu and Cruise have made a movie about the delusion of greatness that is itself trying to be great, and the tension between those two impulses is exactly what makes it fascinating. It won't convert skeptics of either artist, but for anyone who wants to see a major American film swing for something thorny and weird, it's essential. A theatrical experience that argues loudly - and mostly persuasively - for the mess.