Digger is a 2026 American satirical black comedy, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Sabina Berman, Alexander Dinelaris Jr., and Nicolás Giacobone. The original idea and story development was by Iñárritu, Berman, and Jez Butterworth. The film had its world premiere as a Royal Command Performance in Leicester Square in London in late September, and went on general release in the UK last Friday, October 2.

I am sure you are thinking there are a lot of writers on this film – if that was cooks and broth, we’d be in real trouble. And maybe that’s the problem, for there seems to be a lack of focus: everything just rambles on a bit, albeit very shoutily. I understand that at the press screenings critics were asked not to give too much away about the plot twists so that audiences could enjoy the film without preconceptions. I think my invite to the press screenings must have gone straight to my spam folder, however I will endeavour to honour the producers’ wishes.

Digger Rockwell (Tom Cruise) is an aging oil magnate who has repeatedly ignored warnings of impending climate catastrophe connected to his company’s Greenland oilfield; now there has been a gas explosion which has dislodged an ice shelf the size of Maryland and sent it hurtling (insofar as an ice shelf can hurtle) towards Europe, specifically Norway. Safety chief Dr. Nirav Ganesh (Riz Ahmed) warns that the result will be an environmental catastrophe of unprecedented proportions. Digger meets with US President Compson (John Goodman) to discuss how to handle the issue; it becomes apparent that controlling the narrative is more important to them than dealing with the issue, although in fairness it is probably too late to deal with the issue anyway. Then there are a couple of seismic plot shifts which make the thing, to my mind, marginally less interesting, followed by marginally more interesting.

The problem is that there is a lot of shouting and, dare I say, desperately bad acting (and I should also mention there is a rather ridiculous cat who never looks real anyway). However, all is not lost: after the first plot shift, we discover that the bad acting was deliberate. I know, sounds ridiculous, and I think that is probably because it was rather ridiculous. I cannot really give much more story without spoiling the producers’ desire to keep it all secret however, spoiler to the producers here, the details are all over the internet anyway.

I think that the basic idea was interesting enough and I suspect if it had remained the vision of just one man rather than virtually the entire Writers’ Guild, it might have been tighter and better realised, although I was left with the feeling that nobody had quite enough confidence to keep it on track, which is amazing given that the budget was $150 million give or take 20%. Of course, the direction was down to Iñárritu, whose work I generally like a lot, so he must shoulder the blame, and I am afraid blame is the right word.

How was Tom Cruise at playing an older guy? Hard to tell – he was very shouty, but he was supposed to be a bad actor but even when he wasn’t supposed to be a bad actor, he didn’t seem all that good to me. Riz Ahmed was the star of the show – he really had the hang of acting badly in a way that shows that he is a really good actor. John Goodman was wasted, basically a weak caricature, as was Sandra Hüller as Emma, Digger’s half-sister and business partner, who is a hugely talented actor and to whom everyone concerned owes a massive apology.

To be fair, there were some funny moments and there was a tremendous speech by Digger to the European Parliament outlining their effective complicity in the catastrophe, resulting from their environmental hypocrisy (which just pushed the film from * to **).

However, I regret to say that Digger is probably not worth seeing. My advice: wait for it to reach Netflix and, when it does, invite a few wise-cracking friends around and get everyone pleasantly drunk before you start watching!