Tom Cruise's First Original Movie in 9 Years Is Officially the Most Divisive Movie of His Career
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Tom Cruise has spent the better part of the last decade saving the world, saving movie theaters, flying fighter jets, and repeatedly attempting to kill himself for our entertainment, so playing an eccentric oil tycoon who accidentally screws over the entire planet counts as taking it easy. The thing is, having spent that time giving us the most crowd-pleasing entertainment imaginable, now people can't seem to agree on whether his latest movie is a masterpiece or an absolute disaster.
In Digger, Cruise plays Digger Rockwell alongside Ahmed, John Goodman (The Big Lebowski), Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall), Michael Stuhlbarg (A Serious Man), Jesse Plemons (Civil War), Sophie Wilde (Talk to Me), Emma D’Arcy (House of the Dragon), Robert John Burke (RoboCop 3), and Burn Gorman (Pacific Rim).
Alejandro G. Iñárritu directs from a screenplay written with Alexander Dinelaris, Nicolás Giacobone, and Sabina Berman, with a story credited to Berman, Iñárritu, and Jez Butterworth. The movie also reunites the director with Oscar-winning cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, and was shot entirely in VistaVision.
Early reactions to Digger have officially landed ahead of its October 2 release, and “mixed” doesn’t really cover it. The first wave ranges from calling the movie “audacious” and “powder keg cinema” to describing it as “a mess” and saying it simply “wasn’t enjoyable.” Cruise’s performance is getting similarly fascinating reactions, with some already throwing around the words “Academy Award” while another reaction calls him the “least interesting actor” on screen.
That’s a pretty dramatic response for Cruise, whose recent career has been dominated by broadly acclaimed blockbusters including Top Gun: Maverick and the Mission: Impossible movies. Warner Bros. itself has described Digger as Cruise’s first original film in nearly a decade, with the actor playing Digger Rockwell, the world’s most powerful man, who desperately attempts to prove he can save humanity from a catastrophe he caused himself.
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