Tom Cruise is back in the Oscars conversation with his best performance since 1999's Magnolia, but his chances may hinge on how audiences react to a bold narrative gamble by Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu, the Oscar-winning filmmaker behind Birdman and The Revenant.
A grotesque parade at Rockwell Manor
In Digger, Cruise plays oil emperor Digger Rockwell, who wakes in silk pyjamas in a mansion straight out of a Wes Anderson film, aged and pale in a fat suit with a wispy comb-over. The Anderson-inspired quirk continues as he tends to his beloved elderly cat Maggie, who briefly steals the show after soiling his bed.
But trouble arrives in the form of Ganesh (Riz Ahmed), an environmental expert for Digger's oil company, who brings news of an explosion at a rig in Greenland and a colossal ice shelf heading towards the North Sea, threatening to wipe out Europe.
Dr Strangelove meets the Coen Brothers
The President (John Goodman, unrecognisably slim) and his advisers descend on Digger's estate in a scenario that morphs from Anderson's lightness to a Coen Brothers-style frenzy. Military commanders rant about blowing up the ice shelf, with one boasting about a Tomahawk missile's power. Goodman delivers comic lines with gusto, including a confession about having "cancer of the asshole" with "a lump down there the size of a racoon."
Just as the President muses on gaining "a different perspective when death starts whispering into your anal cavity," Iñárritu's narrative dice roll upends everything the audience thought it was watching.
A divisive twist that splits the audience
The shift is not revolutionary, but it is discombobulating enough to split viewers in two, potentially hurting Cruise's Oscar chances. Yet it gradually reveals itself as a genius move. Experiencing the twist without prior knowledge is the recommended way to watch, with other outlets likely to spoil it.
Cruise is a grandstanding hoot, raging in a deep southern drawl, echoing his Magnolia energy. Ahmed is delightfully wimpy as the unravelling Ganesh, while Sandra Hüller is somewhat sidelined as Digger's monstrous sister Emma. Jesse Plemons appears in a lesser role.
The film gallops towards a heartbreaking warning about fossil fuels and climate change in the real world. Audacious, risky, and terrific fun, Digger is in cinemas from October 2.
