There is an unmistakable air of excessive, hard-to-ignore theatricality in Digger, Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s gloriously deranged satire about oil, power and consequences. It is an ode to bad men — men who care little about killing the world, as long as it serves a higher purpose: making them more money.

Like the caricatures of men of power it depicts — primarily the corporate moguls, army men and politicians — the film is loud, strange, intemperate and perhaps far too pleased with its own madness. The madness and the satire, though, have a legitimate reason to co-exist.

Meet the embodiment of both: Digger Rockwell (Tom Cruise), an ageing oil magnate in cahoots with President Compson (John Goodman), who has been drilling deep into Alaska and Greenland despite methane warnings. As expected, a pocket explodes and an ice shelf the size of Maryland is towed away by ocean currents towards Norway.

With impact due in three days, Dr Nirav Ganesh (Riz Ahmed), the perpetually alarmed safety chief riddled with righteousness, screams about the loss of life the collision will bring. Digger and Compson cross their fingers in the hope that the ice melts in the Atlantic.

Alejandro Iñárritu’s Digger is loud, strange and gloriously unhinged — an eco-satire that digs beneath its own madness to confront the stories we tell ourselves when reality becomes too ugly to face

Disaster ensues and Europe floods. Digger faces the European Parliament, owns the catastrophe, argues that the world demanded his oil, and watches the chamber turn on itself. Compson — undergoing surgery for rectal cancer — floats the idea of nuking China as a distraction. His military chief Fitzgerald (Robert John Burke), however, thinks about nuking the ice, which Ganesh warns will only break it into pieces. Five years later, following a bigger disaster, Digger sits on an offshore platform, deserted by most of his men, bullying God for more food.

Yes, the film is as dark as it is comedic; in this case, one shouldn’t confuse fun with funny. The seriousness is ever-present, no matter the set-up.

Around the 30-minute mark, the film changes one’s perspective and the overblown theatricality suddenly makes sense. Although the full scope of this reveal hits you only in the last frames, the twist makes the drama more profound and palpable — perhaps more so than Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove. The obvious comparison, though, is in spirit only.

By the end, Digger evolves from an eco-satire into a film about the stories we tell ourselves when reality becomes too ugly to face. I know this is a cop-out, but to understand what this writer means, one has to see the film.

There are, of course, good reasons to buy a ticket: Iñárritu — who, one needn’t be reminded, was the director of Birdman (2014) and The Revenant (2015) — his cinematographer on those films, Emmanuel Lubezki, the production design and Cruise and Ahmed.

Lubezki deliberately boxes the characters into a 5:4 squarish yet immersive VistaVision frame. Ahmed’s Ganesh is Digger’s foil — a man who can’t help sounding off his righteous concerns, despite shaking like a leaf. At one point, Goodman’s president even asks why Ganesh hasn’t been killed yet. Ahmed gets as much room as Cruise and, at times, owns the scenes. He will likely be a solid candidate in the Oscars race later this year.

Cruise — whom one forgets was nominated for Born on the Fourth of July, and was robbed for Jerry Maguire and Magnolia — is a shoo-in as well for the Oscars. Shifting tones with the subtlest of transitions, in his seclusion we see him as a fragile old man who loves his dying cat with the genuine worry of a parent. Barely a moment later, he turns into a corporate mogul who hates the idea of losing millions.

One realises early that Digger is not wrong about everything he says — and perhaps that’s why, despite his apparent evilness, he is not played like a villain. His self-conviction, written on to the page by Iñárritu and co-writers Alexander Dinelaris Jr, Nicolás Giacobone and Sabina Berman, empowers Cruise to make him unforgivably loathsome, yet pitiful at the same time. Then there is the other side of Digger — the part kept spoiler-free here — that twists the narrative and helps Cruise augment a subtler divide in performance.

The balancing act is harder than it looks. Digger is interested in how we process catastrophe through performance, rhetoric and make-believe — how stories become easier to consume than facts, and how, in the process, we begin confusing narrative with truth. Because of the peculiarity of Iñárritu’s style, some will like it, while others will hate it with every fibre of their being.

Released by Warner Bros and HKC, Digger also stars Sandra Hüller, Michael Stuhlbarg and Jesse Plemons. The film is rated A for Adults. At times, it may prove too dense or radical even for the more mature among us

The writer is Icon’s primary film reviewer

Published in Dawn, ICON, October 11th, 2026