Tom Cruise's Digger is branded 'the biggest risk of his career' as 'love it or hate it' film divides critics with polarising reviews ranging from 'a masterpiece' and 'insufferable'

Tom Cruise's riskiest role to date in Digger has divided critics, with reviews of the film ranging from 'a masterpiece' to 'insufferable'.

The big budget black comedy was positioned as a major awards contender for the actor, as he underwent a dramatic transformation to take on the role of an eccentric oil tycoon who unknowingly sparks an ecological disaster.

Reviews for the film have been hugely mixed, with one noting that the role is indeed a bold one for Tom, given his decades-long reputation for big budget blockbusters.

The Daily Mail's Brian Viner leaned on the side of praise, as he awarded the film four stars, writing: 'I've already seen Digger twice, and enjoyed it much more the second time, knowing the twists from the start. 

'First time round, I felt it got tangled in its own conceit and artifice, becoming not just baffling but self-indulgent.

'Nonetheless, this is bold and often brilliant film-making, with deserved whispers of Oscar nominations for Inarritu, Cruise and Goodman, and fabulous supporting performances from Ahmed, Sandra Huller and Jesse Plemons, not to mention an animatronic cat.'

Tom Cruise's riskiest role to date in Digger has divided critics, with reviews of the film ranging from 'a masterpiece' to 'insufferable'

Other critics to laud the film included the BBC's Nicholas Barber, who wrote in his four-star review: 'Personally, I loved it. Some of its excesses are, well, a bit too excessive, and most viewers will wish it was shorter. 

'After about 90 minutes, you get tired of close-ups of Goodman yelling while snake-sized veins bulge out of his forehead. 

'But when Cruise is clambering all over the set, delivering thunderous lectures on the oil industry, I couldn't help grinning at the gargantuan scale of his performance, the conviction of the script's grim environmental message, and Iñárritu's antic style.'

In The Telegraph, Robbie Collin branded Digger 'the most bonkers film of the year', writing: 'Digger itself exists in that perpetually uncertain state, and I'm not sure whether the debate it's having with itself about art's impotence in the face of catastrophe is one it can, or even wants to, resolve. 

'But what a thrill to watch Iñárritu and Cruise hash it out with so much beauty, daring and extravagance.'

Amy Nicholson wrote in The LA Times: 'Tom Cruise has dangled from cliffs, skyscrapers and planes, but oil magnate Digger Rockwell is his riskiest role in eons.' 

Collider also praised Cruise's 'bizarre but brilliant performance', adding: 'Without special effects or stunts, the veteran star holds your attention throughout, grandstanding in a way that feels like an Oscar moment both in its intention and its impact.'

However, many reviews were on the negative side, with The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw awarding the film just two stars.

The big budget black comedy was positioned as a major awards contender for the actor, as he underwent a dramatic transformation to take on the role of an eccentric oil tycoon

He wrote: 'As with Adam McKay's Don't Look Up, there may be a tacit consensus, understandable at some level, that at least we have a big mainstream movie which is talking about the biggest issue of our time, and we have a duty to suspend critical objection. 

'Digger certainly resonates with Donald Trump's greedy urge to despoil the Arctic and everywhere else. Yet there is something glib and overblown here. This film finds itself in a postmodern hole. And what do you do when you're in a hole?'

Kevin Maher in The Times went further, and gave the film just one star while writing: 'There surely exists an alternate movie universe where Digger is played by an actual ''older'' actor, say Dustin Hoffman or Ben Kingsley, and in that universe that film is certainly more effective than this one. 

'Cruise, instead, is in the unenviable position of being Digger's sole selling point and its fatal flaw.'

In his two-star review, Empire's Olly Richards wrote: 'Digger is a bumptious blowhard... Cruise emerges with a win, reminding us how riveting he can be as an actor, not just as a movie star. 

'A role so oversized and absurd demands fearless commitment, which he certainly gives. The big swing is laudable. If only the film were more rewarding.'

Writing in Variety, Owen Gleiberman said: 'I'm not sure that 'Digger' is going to connect, because it's so full of itself — so top-heavy with importance. 

'The movie cost north of $125 million to make, and that figure is not only too big to probably justify itself; it's a testament to the arrogance of the filmmakers - to the assumption that we'll turn out in droves for this ponderous absurdist lecture.'

David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter wrote: 'I was reminded of colossal misfires like Damien Chazelle's Babylon and David O. Russell's Amsterdam, bloated movies by directors so drunk on their exalted reputations they forgot there was an audience to consider.'

In one particularly scathing review, The Boston Globe called Digger a 'turgid, unfunny, and borderline unwatchable 128 minute mess'.

Den of Geek wrote, '[Digger] forgets the statement must still work as anything more than a self-flagellating valediction from a movie star.'

William Bibbiani of The Wrap said: 'Digger is what happens when you give the week's worst Saturday Night Live sketch an inexplicably large budget and delusions of grandeur.'

Johnny Oleksinski in The New York Post called the film an 'insufferable slog', writing: 'The trouble with Iñárritu's pretentious frame story (sorry to be so vague) is that it causes us to not take about 90% of the movie seriously and to zone out for long stretches. 

'There are no stakes to be found and no laughs to be had. There's certainly no point.'

In her two-star review, The Independent's Clarisse Loughrey said: 'As much as Digger has been sold on the promise that Cruise here is a revelation, there's no real inversion to speak of, merely a return to the kind of work he did (over two decades ago!) before his blockbuster action streak. 

'Even his latex makeover seems reminiscent of his paunchy, balding Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder.'

In Indiewire, David Ehrlich said: 'The reason why Digger is a nobler and more rewarding failure than Birdman or Bardo is because it doesn't have to pretend that Digger Rockwell is a real person. 

'He's a living cartoon who's exempted from the human foundation that was missing from those earlier films, and — for all of this movie's psych-outs and detours — that allows Iñárritu to address his existential crises with a greater directness and degree of relatability.'

Despite some positive feedback from certain critics, box office predictions for the film – which cost upwards of $125million to make – are dire. 

According to World of Reel, Digger may open with less than $10million this weekend.

Box Office Theory has a strong prediction, reporting that Digger could open with between $16million and $26million.

Digger: What the critics think 

The Daily Mail, Brian Viner

Rating:

Rating: Four stars

'I've already seen Digger twice, and enjoyed it much more the second time, knowing the twists from the start. 

'First time round, I felt it got tangled in its own conceit and artifice, becoming not just baffling but self-indulgent.

'Nonetheless, this is bold and often brilliant film-making, with deserved whispers of Oscar nominations for Inarritu, Cruise and Goodman, and fabulous supporting performances from Ahmed, Sandra Huller and Jesse Plemons, not to mention an animatronic cat.'

BBC, Nicholas Barber

Rating:

Rating: Four stars 

'Personally, I loved it. Some of its excesses are, well, a bit too excessive, and most viewers will wish it was shorter. 

'After about 90 minutes, you get tired of close-ups of Goodman yelling while snake-sized veins bulge out of his forehead. 

'But when Cruise is clambering all over the set, delivering thunderous lectures on the oil industry, I couldn't help grinning at the gargantuan scale of his performance, the conviction of the script's grim environmental message, and Iñárritu's antic style.'

The Telegraph, Robbie Collin

Rating:

Rating: Four stars

'Digger itself exists in that perpetually uncertain state, and I'm not sure whether the debate it's having with itself about art's impotence in the face of catastrophe is one it can, or even wants to, resolve. 

'But what a thrill to watch Iñárritu and Cruise hash it out with so much beauty, daring and extravagance.'

The Los Angeles Times, Amy Nicholson

'Tom Cruise has dangled from cliffs, skyscrapers and planes, but oil magnate Digger Rockwell is his riskiest role in eons.'

Collider

'Without special effects or stunts, the veteran star [Tom Cruise] holds your attention throughout, grandstanding in a way that feels like an Oscar moment both in its intention and its impact.'

The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw 

Rating:

Rating: Two stars 

'As with Adam McKay's Don't Look Up, there may be a tacit consensus, understandable at some level, that at least we have a big mainstream movie which is talking about the biggest issue of our time, and we have a duty to suspend critical objection. 

'Digger certainly resonates with Donald Trump's greedy urge to despoil the Arctic and everywhere else. Yet there is something glib and overblown here. This film finds itself in a postmodern hole. And what do you do when you're in a hole?'

The Times, Kevin Maher 

Rating:

Rating: One star 

'There surely exists an alternate movie universe where Digger is played by an actual ''older'' actor, say Dustin Hoffman or Ben Kingsley, and in that universe that film is certainly more effective than this one. 

'Cruise, instead, is in the unenviable position of being Digger's sole selling point and its fatal flaw.'

Empire, Olly Richards

Rating:

Rating: Two stars 

'Digger is a bumptious blowhard... Cruise emerges with a win, reminding us how riveting he can be as an actor, not just as a movie star. 

'A role so oversized and absurd demands fearless commitment, which he certainly gives. The big swing is laudable. If only the film were more rewarding.'

Variety, Owen Gleiberman

'I'm not sure that 'Digger' is going to connect, because it's so full of itself — so top-heavy with importance. 

'The movie cost north of $125 million to make, and that figure is not only too big to probably justify itself; it's a testament to the arrogance of the filmmakers - to the assumption that we'll turn out in droves for this ponderous absurdist lecture.'

The Hollywood Reporter, David Rooney

'I was reminded of colossal misfires like Damien Chazelle's Babylon and David O. Russell's Amsterdam, bloated movies by directors so drunk on their exalted reputations they forgot there was an audience to consider.' 

The Boston Globe

Digger is a 'turgid, unfunny, and borderline unwatchable 128 minute mess'. 

Den Of Geek

'[Digger] forgets the statement must still work as anything more than a self-flagellating valediction from a movie star.' 

The Wrap, William Bibianni

'Digger is what happens when you give the week's worst Saturday Night Live sketch an inexplicably large budget and delusions of grandeur.'

The New York Post, Johnny Oleksinski

'The trouble with Iñárritu's pretentious frame story (sorry to be so vague) is that it causes us to not take about 90% of the movie seriously and to zone out for long stretches. 

'There are no stakes to be found and no laughs to be had. There's certainly no point.'

The Independent, Clarisse Loughrey

Rating:

Rating: Two stars 

'As much as Digger has been sold on the promise that Cruise here is a revelation, there's no real inversion to speak of, merely a return to the kind of work he did (over two decades ago!) before his blockbuster action streak. 

'Even his latex makeover seems reminiscent of his paunchy, balding Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder.'

Indiewire, David Ehrlic

'The reason why Digger is a nobler and more rewarding failure than Birdman or Bardo is because it doesn't have to pretend that Digger Rockwell is a real person. 

'He's a living cartoon who's exempted from the human foundation that was missing from those earlier films, and — for all of this movie's psych-outs and detours — that allows Iñárritu to address his existential crises with a greater directness and degree of relatability.'

Either way, even on the high end these numbers are still disastrous for the big budget Oscars contender. 

Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu (Birdman, The Revenant), Digger follows the world's most powerful man, eccentric oil tycoon Digger Rockwell (played by Cruise), as he races to fix a catastrophic ecological disaster that he himself unleashed.

The film co-stars John Goodman as the dictatorial President of the United States.

The politically charged satire is said to be a commentary on climate issues and corporate greed.

Digger is one of the few awards-focused movies that Cruise has starred in for almost three decades. 

The tagline on the movie poster refers to Digger as 'a comedy of catastrophic proportions'.

Digger is directed by four-time Oscar winner Alejandro, who is known for his work on Birdman and The Revenant.

He is also co-producing the movie with Tom. 

Alejandro previously said of Tom's transformation: 'The transformation he went through was astonishing. 'Alejandro, it took me 40 years to become this character,' he told me once. 

'And I think we both know what it means to carry an entire career into a single moment like this. We both knew that throughout our journeys, we had never done anything even close to this.'

Digger is a diversion for Tom, who has become known for his incredible stunts in high-action films. 

These include scaling Dubai's Burj Khalifa skyscraper for Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, dangling from an Airbus 400 during take off for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation and driving a motorcycle off a cliff for Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One.