'Digger' (2026): Tom Cruise and Alejandro G. Iñárritu Make Noise Worth Arguing About

Divisive was always going to be the defining word for Digger, but fortunately, I landed on the warmer side of the split, having shown up to my IMAX screening with real curiosity. Tom Cruise (Minority Report) has handed me some of my favorite blockbusters of the past decade, while Alejandro G. Iñárritu (Birdman) is a filmmaker I've adored at his sharpest and admired from a distance at his heaviest. Pairing them felt like either a dare or a disaster, and the result sits closer to the dare: exhausting, overstuffed, and fascinating, a satire I respected more often than I laughed at.

Subtlety never really gets a seat at the table. Corruption, greed, institutional power, narcissism, who gets to hold that power and who never does, the swagger behind every decision, the shrug at human life — the script ticks through all of it and then ticks through it again, with monologues that keep running long after their point has landed. For a comedy of catastrophic proportions, I laughed less than I expected: some jokes hit hard, but with the performances and dialogue pitched this far into the red, the volume mostly wore me down, and a few stretches turn convoluted. Self-indulgence comes with satirical territory, yet here it detracts more than it adds. Still, when the writing moves fast, it crackles, and the long takes and rapid-fire exchanges kept my head busy even when my chest wasn't shaking. Boring is something Digger never is.

Cruise is the reason to buy a ticket, and his over-the-top turn is entirely purposeful. The film pulls its "hold on a second" move early, reframing everything as a stage production, which means he's really playing two people: the actor, who stays underdeveloped, and the character he's performing, who's the true star of the show. Seen that way, the excess is a choice, and it's backed by age makeup and costume work that make the physical transformation startling. The tribunal speech is the clear showstopper. Riz Ahmed (Sound of Metal) is the supporting standout, charting a believable climb from frightened to confrontational as the man who simply wants the truth heard. Jesse Plemons (Hell or High Water) saves his best for the final stretch, and John Goodman (10 Cloverfield Lane) is having as much fun as his co-star. Not everyone is that lucky: Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall) and Emma D'Arcy (House of the Dragon) are sidelined, and several characters never get the attention they deserve.

Then there's the sheer physicality of the whole thing. Emmanuel Lubezki (Gravity) shoots Digger in VistaVision with a dreamlike quality that feels lived-in and heightened at once, as if everything were pushing out of the screen, and Dennis Gassner's production design (Blade Runner 2049) belongs in the awards conversation. My IMAX screening had every speaker firing, so the score by Cosmo Sheldrake and sound design hit with real force. The more time passes, the more I admire how the structure reframes the movie, even if I understand perfectly why it sends some viewers running.

Funny, exaggerated, relatable or not, the argument Digger starts is the whole point: a satire with something to say is supposed to split a room, and this one has definitely done it. Its final shot, the words "Compliance is Freedom," sums up everything the film has been shouting, and it stuck with me because it's uncomfortably true. We often stay quiet due to pure fear, and we like our little lives exactly as they are... speaking up would cost us that comfort, and not many people truly want that.

Rating: B