When the trailer for Digger, the new Tom Cruise film from Birdman director Alejandro González Iñárritu, was released, something didn’t feel quite right.
The clip teased an absurd farce centred on a megalomaniacal tycoon whose hunger for power causes a global catastrophe he struggles to contain. But rumours abounded that there was something else about the film being kept secret from viewers. It turns out that is true – and it will make or break the film for many.
Iñárritu himself asked critics who saw the film ahead of the release – including The Independent – to remain tight-lipped on the film’s surprises, and that’s exactly what we’ve done in our first reaction to the film, which you can watch above.
Sure enough, the film – which almost dares the audience to dislike it for large swathes of its running time – has split critics down the middle and seems to have received the most polarising response to any Cruise film to date. This is clearly by design. Iñárritu, who conceived the story with Sabina Berman and Jez Butterworth, has shot for something rather different, and something that should be experienced to formulate your own opinion on the outcome.
Comparison-wise, the film is reminiscent of Adam McKay’s Vice – a form-playing biopic about Dick Cheney, starring Christian Bale, and Todd Phillips’s heavily maligned Joker follow-up, Joker: Folie à Deux, which dared to try something a little different from what people expected. However, it’s worth noting that Digger is not a musical as many people have predicted.
Cruise, 64, is hoping for his fourth acting Oscar nomination for Digger, following Born on the Fourth of July (1989), Jerry Maguire (1996) and Magnolia (1999). On the evidence of his all-in committed performance in Digger, it’s certainly a likelihood.
Other actors who impress in the film include John Goodman, who’s on explosive form, as well as Riz Ahmed and Michael Stuhlbarg, who play wide-eyed advisers to Digger who get caught up in the impending doom.
But it doesn’t seem like Iñárritu will be adding a third Best Director Oscar to his shelf, after winning two consecutive prizes in a row, in 2015 and 2016, for Birdman and The Revenant. Digger, which boasts impressive production design, has a better chance in the technical categories.
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Digger is out on 2 October.