I went into ‘Digger’ expecting Oscar bait, I walked out thoroughly impressed

OCTOBER 17 — As critically acclaimed as Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu may have been throughout his career, I have always found his filmography to be something of a mixed bag. 

I quite liked his raw, multi-narrative debut Amores Perros, but his subsequent, heavily decorated works, films like 21 Grams, Babel, Biutiful, and especially the Oscar-sweeping Birdman, have always felt a bit too obviously like calculated Oscar-bait to me. 

They often struck me as arthouse films designed specifically for people who don’t actually watch or like arthouse films, which is really just a polite way of saying they are slickly packaged like high art rather than genuinely being one.

With that kind of track record, I obviously had major reservations walking into the cinema to watch his latest offering, Digger. 

Judging from the trailers and press rollouts, it was being aggressively marketed as the ultimate Oscar-bait vehicle for lead actor Tom Cruise, tailored to finally fetch him that elusive competitive Academy Award.

However, I am more than happy to be proven wrong by a film. 

And even though film critics have been pretty savage about Digger, very possibly the exact same ones who previously swooned over his self-important, prestige bait entries, colour me very impressed with this one.

Digger is decidedly not an arthouse film. Instead, it plays more like one of those savage, sprawling critiques and dark satires that a director at the absolute zenith of their industry powers can occasionally convince a major Hollywood studio to bankroll on a massive budget. 

It belongs to that rare, audacious strain of big budget studio subversion, think along the lines of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or Terry Gilliam’s Brazil.

The film centres on a desperate, megalomaniacal oil mogul (Tom Cruise) who spearheads a catastrophic, oil drilling venture in a bid to tap into the world’s last remaining major reserve somewhere in Alaska. 

Cruise is absolutely electric here, shedding his recent superheroic stuntman persona from the Mission Impossible films to tap into an erratic, wildly charismatic monster of capitalistic hubris. 

Think of his performance in Magnolia and you’re halfway there. Opposite him, Riz Ahmed provides a brilliant, jittery foil as an overworked lead engineer watching the entire operation collapse into utter madness.

Yet, as magnetic as Cruise and Ahmed are, the real star of the show is the world building craftsmanship and the sheer ingenuity of its visual language. 

The art direction and set design are staggering in scale, constructing a world that feels simultaneously grounded and strangely surreal. 

Inarritu and his production designers embrace a uniquely stylised visual palette. 

US actor Tom Cruise promotes the upcoming film ‘Digger’ during Warner Bros photocall at the Colosseum at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas April 14, 2026. — AFP pic

The sets possess a deliberately heightened, overtly theatrical quality, with dramatic lighting cues, exaggerated physical framing, and staging that feel grandly artificial in the most magnificent way possible. 

Paired with inventive cinematography that captures this staging with meticulous precision, Inarritu’s direction guides the madness with a relentless, biting focus that never lets up.

What elevates Digger even further, though, is how seamlessly its meta-cinematic tactics work to its advantage. 

Inarritu plays a fascinating game with perception, constantly tugging at the illusion of what is “real” within the world of the film and what is merely a grandly orchestrated illusion. 

Rather than feeling like a cheap, self-congratulatory gimmick, these meta flourishes serve to heighten the absurdity of the narrative. 

They strip away the traditional suspension of disbelief, forcing the audience to actively engage with the thematic machinery at play rather than passively consuming another big-budget disaster movie.

Adding further flavour to this chaotic tapestry is an exceptional lineup of supporting turns and surprise cameos that give the film its rich, chaotic energy. 

Leading the charge is a hilariously manic John Goodman as President Compson. Goodman steals every single frame he is in, delivering an unhinged, petulant performance as a finger-pointing, inept politician unraveling under pressure. 

Beyond Goodman’s scene stealing turn, every time the central narrative threatens to lock itself into a predictable groove, Inarritu pops in a memorable side character, from Sandra Hüller to Jesse Plemons, to throw a wrench into the machinery. 

These quick hit appearances are executed with sharp comedic precision, providing worthy, memorable foils for Cruise to bounce his energy off of.

Beneath the chaotic set-pieces, theatrical staging, meta commentary, and dark humour lie some very hard pills to swallow regarding humanity’s insatiable addiction to oil. 

It is deeply refreshing, and the mother of all ironies, to see our ecological hypocrisy so brutally called out inside a lavish, big budget major studio release.

While purists and prestige chasing critics might turn their noses up at its cynical, chaotic edge, Digger stands as Inarritu’s most wildly entertaining and genuinely biting work in years. 

It’s a fierce, visually breathtaking satire that proves when a director uses studio money to burn down studio conventions, the results can be glorious.