Digger Reviews: Tom Cruise's Inarritu Satire Lands Divisive 53% on Review Aggregators

The embargo has lifted, and the verdict is complicated. Critics' reviews for Alejandro G. Inarritu's Digger posted Tuesday at noon Eastern, three days before it opens in theaters, and the Tom Cruise-led satire has landed with a decidedly divided response, per entertainment reporting.

The film stood at 53 percent on review aggregators from 106 reviews, with a 44 on Metacritic. Collider noted it is the lowest score of any Inarritu film on review-aggregation sites — a striking data point for a director whose work has been a fixture of awards season for over a decade.

What the Film Is

Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, an oil tycoon whose drilling breaks off an ice shelf that drifts toward Europe — and who then tries to spin the disaster to cast himself as humanity's savior. It is a premise with unmistakable satirical bite, and Inarritu appears to be swinging for something big: a climate-age parable about power, ego, and the stories the powerful tell about themselves.

The film cost at least $125 million, and Warner Bros. opens it in US and UK theaters on October 2. That is blockbuster money for a satire, which tells you how much faith the studio once had in the combination of Cruise and Inarritu.

A Transformation Divides Critics

One thing reviewers seem to agree on: Cruise disappears into the role. He is barely recognizable under heavy prosthetics, speaking in a gravelly Southern drawl as a bombastic energy tycoon — about as far from his usual movie-star persona as it is possible to get.

It is Inarritu's first English-language feature since The Revenant, and the craft credentials are formidable. The cast includes Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Huller, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jesse Plemons, and Emma D'Arcy, with cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki, shot entirely in VistaVision. Whatever one thinks of the film, nobody is questioning the ambition behind it.

The Studio Braces for Impact

Warner Bros. seemed to anticipate the divided response. An hour before reviews went up, the studio posted an ad reading "Same film, different truth," with the word "Masterpiece" set next to "Unpleasant" — a cheeky acknowledgment that this is a love-it-or-hate-it proposition.

Divisive films with major stars have a way of finding their audience regardless of the aggregate score. With Cruise's transformation generating genuine awards-season chatter, Digger may yet have the last laugh — even if the critics are split down the middle.

Love it or hate it, a $125 million original satire from one of cinema's great directors, starring its biggest star in unrecognizable prosthetics, is exactly the kind of swing theaters were built for. The numbers on Friday morning will tell the rest of the story.