TL;DR: Tom Cruise goes gloriously over the top as a Texas oil tycoon in Iñárritu’s gorgeous, angry and wonderfully weird climate satire. Riz Ahmed brings the heart, the twist brings the chaos, and the whole thing is a must-see gamble.

I’ll say it straight away: Digger is the most fun I’ve had watching Tom Cruise not run. Alejandro González Iñárritu casts him as Digger Rockwell, an ancient Texas oil tycoon with sagging jowls, thinning white hair gone wild, a paunch, a ten-gallon hat and a potty mouth that would make a Call of Duty lobby blush. Digger doesn’t just run a company. He basically runs the oil industry, which means he basically runs America, and he acts like the rest of the planet is on his payroll too. Watching Cruise, the guy who treats skyscrapers like climbing frames, plant his feet and chew through every scene like it owes him money is a total blast.

It’s also a genuinely big swing for him. This is his first film since American Made in 2017 that isn’t a sequel, and he produces alongside Iñárritu and Mary Parent, so he clearly wanted this weird little monster to exist. The whole thing is a Legendary production released by Warner Bros., reportedly costing north of $125 million, which is wild money for an R-rated climate satire with an art-house director at the wheel. I love that somebody signed that cheque. Blockbuster Hollywood doesn’t take many gambles like this anymore, and it deserves credit for taking one this strange.

A crack in Greenland’s ice turns into a continent-sized problem

The film is set in the not-too-distant future, and it opens with Digger waking up in a mansion that feels more like a gold-plated fortress than a home, curled up with his fluffy white cat, which is dying and, amusingly, very obviously played by a mechanical cat. Then the bad news rolls in from Greenland. His oil operation has opened a crack in the ice, only a few feet wide, but growing fast. Digger’s reaction is exactly what you’d expect from a man who’s spent decades drilling first and worrying never. Unfortunately for him, years of reckless drilling have unleashed a flood of methane, and a 400-mile-wide ice shelf breaks away and starts drifting toward Europe, threatening a tsunami and death on an unimaginable scale.

That’s where Dr. Ganesh (Riz Ahmed), Digger’s long-suffering science adviser, comes in as the man who has to keep delivering the bad news. Faced with being known forever as the guy who drowned a continent, Digger decides he’ll save the world instead, and naturally take the credit. I’m not going anywhere near what happens after that, because the film takes a jaw-dropping turn late in its first act that flips the whole thing on its head. It’s the kind of swing that’ll have some people cheering and others staring at the screen wondering what on earth they just watched. Honestly, that’s half the fun.

Lubezki and Iñárritu make it look like nothing else in cinemas

Iñárritu reunites with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, his partner on Birdman and The Revenant, and the result looks gorgeous in a very deliberate, slightly unhinged way. The colour palette is so drained it’s nearly black-and-white, the sets are packed with ornate detail, and every frame seems designed to remind you this is not your average studio release. Add a score from Cosmo Sheldrake and you’ve got a movie with real personality baked into its look and sound. It’s the kind of visual ambition that makes you want to see it on the biggest screen possible. In a year full of sequels that all look the same, that alone made me smile.

Tonally, Digger is loud, angry and proudly over the top. It’s a satire about corporate greed and the way the powerful dodge blame for the climate crisis, and it doesn’t whisper its message. Not every joke lands, and a few moments lean more lecture than laugh, but I’d rather watch a film swing wildly and miss occasionally than play it safe. There’s a Kojima-level weirdness to the whole thing that I found genuinely refreshing. It’s messy, sure, but it’s alive.

Cruise’s big speech is the moment the whole film clicks

On the surface, Digger Rockwell is a walking cartoon, all bluster, swagger and good-ol’-boy glee. Cruise commits to it completely, declaiming every line like he’s auditioning for the back row of a stadium, and he’s clearly having the time of his life. What stops it from being a one-note caricature is the film’s standout sequence, where Digger addresses a room full of the world’s powerful and explains why humanity is still hooked on oil. His answer is uncomfortable: because we want to be, thanks to countless everyday comforts none of us are keen to give up. It’s the smartest idea in the movie, and Cruise delivers it with a kind of fire-and-brimstone relish that had me grinning. At 64, he’s still finding new gears, and this might be the most surprising one yet.

Riz Ahmed brings the heart, and the cast brings the chaos

If Cruise is the fireworks, Riz Ahmed is the soul. Ganesh starts as the one person in Digger’s world who’s rooted in reality, and as everything collapses, he slowly unravels into a frazzled, drunken wreck. Ahmed plays that collapse beautifully, giving the film real emotional weight without ever feeling like he wandered in from a different movie. Every time the satire threatens to get too broad, he drags it back down to earth. He’s already an Oscar winner for the short The Long Goodbye, and I’d happily see him back in the awards race for this.

The supporting cast is absurdly stacked. John Goodman glowers as a President with a very unglamorous health problem, Michael Stuhlbarg plays his Vice President, Sandra Hüller is Digger’s furious half-sister who runs an environmental company, and Jesse Plemons pops up as the mysterious Kenny, with Emma D’Arcy, Sophie Wilde, Burn Gorman and Robert John Burke also in the mix. Not everyone gets enough room to breathe, and Goodman in particular is stuck playing one sour note. Still, seeing this many heavyweights bounce off Cruise’s hurricane of a performance is a treat.

Verdict

Digger is big, bold, bizarre and one of the most memorable studio films of 2026. Tom Cruise gives his wildest performance in years, Riz Ahmed brings genuine heart, Lubezki’s near-monochrome visuals look stunning, and that first-act twist will have people arguing long after the credits roll. It’s not flawless, with a crowded cast and a message that sometimes arrives with a megaphone, but its ambition more than makes up for it. If you love Iñárritu at his most daring, enjoy satire with teeth, or just want to see Cruise let loose, catch it in cinemas from October 1, 2026. Anyone hoping for a Mission: Impossible-style thrill ride should adjust expectations first.