Alejandro González Iñárritu | Digger | Warner Bros. Pictures | October 2026 | 129 minutes

Digger is a spiteful film. It hates oligarchs most obviously, but as it proceeds, the disdain extends to film producers, bystanders, lip service blowhards, humanity as a whole (but Americans especially), and Adam McKay. It is less surprising that people walk out of Digger early (I had two walkouts during my showing, which must’ve held fewer than ten audience members), less surprising that many hate Digger back, than it is that many others do seem to understand that Digger is a monument to the ineffectiveness of modern political art past being a cheap balm for our consciences as we sink further and further into complacency – and still respect and enjoy it as indicts them. It is a movie that even hates itself, palpably frustrated with its own existence being, by necessity, hypocritical and insufficient. It is a satire of satire, a performance utterly sickened by performativity. It is one of the most pretentious films I have ever watched. It is one of the saddest and most earnest films I’ve ever watched. It is one of the best films I have ever watched, and it is arguably the boldest and most salient film critique of our culture as it exists in the 2020s.

Tom Cruise is Digger Rockwell. Sort of. There’s a twist that happens relatively early in Digger that recontextualizes the entire film before its recontextualized probably three more times, and without spoiling it directly, let’s just say that no character in Digger is exactly who they pretend to be – but they also are – both in a literal and metaphorical sense. I hope this is clear. Anyways, for the sake of this review and keeping things as simple as possible: Tom Cruise is Digger Rockwell. Rockwell runs Rockwell United, an oil company that finds itself responsible for what is effectively a series of devastating climate events after an explosion at one of their drilling sites in Greenland displaces an ice shelf that is swept into an ocean current that directs it to crash into Europe. Digger plays this scenario, by and large, within its initial layer, as utter farce. Cruise’s Rockwell lumbers around clumsily in an awful fat suit and bald cap with bad makeup, his oversized mansion replete with unnecessary doors and monuments to high art and culture left to disrepair, as he desperately attempts to keep his 30-year-old cat – Maggie – alive. Everything and everyone else – past a very myopic perspective on what constitutes “winning” – is disregarded. While it is easy to see elements of Trump and Trump’s America within Digger, to boil it down to a commentary on this would be more than a little reductive. Digger has a lot to say about a lot of people and a lot of things, but the allegory of Maggie is important. At one point, Digger’s half-sister Emma (Sandra Hüller) notes that Maggie is “already dead” and “decaying in [Digger’s] arms.” Digger Rockwell, goofy and negligent as he is in many regards, could not save Maggie under any circumstances. Maggie – and what she represents – has run her/its course.

While Digger places a hefty share of the blame on its titular character for the many disastrous mishaps that occur throughout the film, it is important – or actually the most important point the film makes – to note that no one escapes this film’s wrath. If Digger is not anti-humanity, it is at the very least anti-American. If Digger is not anti-art (I don’t think it is), it is at the very least in opposition of how major American films will monetize critiques of the problems our government and military creates, how elements of our modern arts culture are just an extension of the same capitalist systems that perpetuate misery across the globe. In Digger’s arguably best scene, Cruise delivers a monologue at the European Parliament where he reads an ashen pulpit dead to rights, towing the line between a self-serving God complex rant and an uncomfortably accurate screed on hypocrisy and passivity within the general populace. More than ever, the individual is desperate to make sure that everyone knows that they oppose “bad things,” while simultaneously doing the absolute least to actually oppose them. You can point to voting percentages, but even if you would like to make the argument that voting is ineffective, direct action is also rare. We clamber on about how the 2020s are one of the worst times in human history, and in some ways they might be. Yet the reality remains that we look back on a long history of revolutions across the globe and we remain inactive. Cruise’s character argues that without oil, the lives of Americans and the people of other first-world countries would be harder, and the reality is that we don’t want to actually make those sacrifices. But we also can’t handle being “bad,” so we scapegoat a figurehead – a sin-eater – to criticize but not actually hold to account. This does not absolve the sin-eater but implicates everyone – literally everyone – alongside him. 

This is only the first level of critique that Digger operates on: this itself is an analogy. One criticism against Digger I’ve seen levied is that if it was to be an effective satire of modern culture – again, it is this but also a satire of satire of modern culture, a bizarre self-devouring ouroboros of a film – Digger Rockwell should’ve instead been a tech oligarch rather than an old-timey oil magnate. I think this ignores the reality that Rockwell’s mindset still perpetuates within modern American business culture, and more importantly, the philosophical structure of Digger. Digger itself is a film that digs – through layer after layer of realities and critiques trying to strike “oil.” One of those layers strikes upon the uncomfortable truth of critique itself: if we made the world a better place, we would have less to complain about. And unfortunately, we love to complain.

It is so expected for the critic to hate Digger because Digger is an attack on the critic, far more so than even Alejandro González Iñárritu’s past directorial efforts. Early on, if you believe yourself to be “good,” you can project yourself into Riz Ahmed’s Dr. Nirav Ganesh, Digger Rockwell’s head of environmental safety. He warns Digger of the risks, he presents the potential outcomes of Digger’s mistakes as complicated and nuanced when the rest of his war room wants simple, clear answers to unknowable questions (it must be noted that John Goodman turns in an incredibly fun performance as President Compson, even if his character is less integral to discuss than others), and he is highly critical of Digger’s practices. However, ultimately, his words and criticisms are empty. The reality is that he is under the employ of Digger Rockwell and continues to serve his purposes throughout the duration of the film. Even as he presents as the only sane man in an insane world, he continues to catalyze the insanity. There’s a scene where he and Digger are on a plane, and Digger offers Ganesh sushi. Ganesh declines at first, noting the particular tuna is endangered and he “tries” not to indulge. Eventually, he caves, eating the last piece and savoring every bit. Digger tells Ganesh that “trying” not to do something just means you do sometimes. Ganesh’s principles on paper are admirable, but they are theoretical: functionally, he is as selfish as everyone else in Digger, he’s just less silly and less honest about it.

While it’s more difficult to discuss him in detail due to spoilers and the nature of Digger, Jesse Plemons’ character Kenny is this story’s anchor, existing across both “layers” of the film. There’s a subplot between him and Cruise’s character, where Cruise’s character’s daughter goes missing after boarding a flight, and Kenny is in a position to help track her down. The offer itself is a small, meaningful human good, an incredibly kind gesture. All he needs is her phone number. The implications of this immediately scale big, and more harrowing: Kenny is the surveillance state. Does this invalidate the gesture? Not necessarily. Does it implicate grander and more insidious intentions beyond this interaction? Yes. Digger is uncomfortable, constantly uncozy because it refuses to flatten anyone or anything, but will also call anyone and anything out on its bullshit. In a later monologue, Plemons goes meta, addressing the material itself. Is it silly or serious? It’s both. Everyone is right. Everyone is wrong. Everyone has a point. Everyone is full of it. And whenever we hear something akin to this, there is an impulse to dismiss this messaging as “centrist” or “fence sitting.” And it’s incredibly aggravating to come up against a film like Digger because it’s very difficult to make that argument in a way that is honest and cogent. Digger doesn’t sit on the fence: it kicks the fence down and mangles everyone on either side. There’s no escape.

I’m in the same position anyone who reviews this film is in: I have to admit to the ultimate emptiness and pointlessness of my own thoughts, as they do not constitute meaningful action. And yet, I still love Digger – its contradictory existence, and the uncomfortable position it puts me in where whether I admitted to loving it or lied and said I hated it, I would myself become a contradiction either way. While films such as Dr. Strangelove, Synecdoche, New York, Opening Night, Eddington, Bugonia, and even Why Don’t You Play In Hell? all find ways to bleed into the layers of Digger, I’m not sure if I’ve ever watched a film that does quite what it does. It’s a self-indulgent mess that somehow works, Don’t Look Up if Don’t Look Up wanted to kill itself. A ridiculously expensive film that hates what a waste it all is, and yet still somehow acknowledges that art is valuable even if it doesn’t fucking matter, and continues to attack that reality. Deeper and deeper, it never ends. This is not the best film of 2026: it’s the defining film of the decade, for better and for worse.

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Travis Shosa is a writer from Spring, TX. They are the EIC and managing editor of Dodo Eraser. Their creative writing is featured in Stanchion, Maudlin House, HAD, Bending Genres, fifth wheel press, HAWKEYE, Some Words and lots of other cool places. They have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions. Their journalism has been featured in Pitchfork, Bandcamp Daily, The Line of Best Fit, PAPER, Spectrum Culture, and others.