Movie review: 'Digger' has fully committed Tom Cruise but can't extract climate change wisdom

As oil baron Digger Rockwell, in Alejandro González Iñarritu’s "Digger," makeup is relied upon to make Tom Cruise grotesque, and he's asked to put his prodigious talents to use in satirizing a truly evil man with a big swinging personality.

The curtain rises on a proscenium, our first clue that everything in "Digger" is artificial, a representation or facsimile of reality — a pantomime. Luxe bedroom window drapes reveal a shimmering pastoral scene: a verdant river valley, dotted with trees, an ideal image of nature’s majesty that’s so beautiful it doesn’t even look real.

Inside this sleeping chamber is Digger Rockwell, tending to his ailing, aged cat (an animatronic, of course). Digger’s a nepo-oilman, continuing the work of his daddy and granddaddy, family heirloom shovel in hand. While he’s ensconced in this mansion with beautiful vistas, his company is drilling and digging for black gold in the icy wilds of Greenland. Apocalyptic news from the outpost penetrates his morning: despite repeated warnings, a disaster has occurred thanks to his aggressive drilling program. An explosion has flattened the operation and sent a massive iceberg nicknamed Judy straight for Western Europe. With rising sea levels and floodwaters imminent, Digger’s about to have the blood of millions on his hands.

The freewheeling, wise-lensed camera of longtime Iñarritu collaborator Emmanuel Lubezki captures the chaos that ensues, as Digger’s environmental adviser Dr. Ganesh (Riz Ahmed) arrives, as well as the United States President Compson (John Goodman), his Cabinet in tow, to tackle the Judy problem.

The scientist is nebbishy, quivering, an easy pushover; the politicians and generals a bunch of Bible-beating, warmongering misogynists, frothing at the jowls. They propose bombing the dickens out of Judy like so many Doctors Strangelove, while Dr. Ganesh frets that we’re long past any action other than preparedness. Digger ultimately decides to leave Europe’s fate to the wind, and delivers a blistering, blame-ridden speech at a riotous international hearing about the event. "You don’t want me to stop digging!" he accuses the public.

Perhaps the problem with "Digger" is just too many cooks, and too many ideas, the screenplay attributed to Iñarritu, Alexander Dinelaris, Nicolás Giacobone, Sabrina Berman and Jez Butterworth. The film is a hopelessly muddled misfire that doesn’t know where to place blame for a degrading planet, except for on everyone, everywhere, all at once: oil barons, politicians, greenwashing executives represented by Digger’s sister (Sandra Hüller), consumers.

Cruise might be fully committed to this bit, with a wild, wacky, epic performance that is, at times, spellbinding, helmed by a four-time Oscar-winning filmmaker, but in terms of its message, "Digger" doesn’t have any worthwhile wisdom to impart. Cruise is digging for that Oscar win with a performance well outside of his wheelhouse, but in terms of sheer cinematic entertainment, "Digger" is one dry well.