Heads are apparently rolling already at the Hollywood studio, Warner Brothers. Soon to be taken over by billionaire IT bastard and Trump and Israel fan, Larry Ellison. The six-times married corporate parasite who runs Oracle and Tik-Tok, censoring your social media and ensuring your computer software at work isn’t fit for purpose. Great guy. Anyhow he and his son are taking over the American film industry, with a clear political agenda. And not a nice one. Seemingly one of Warner’s last hurrahs as an independent film-making entity is one of its bravest since 1927’s “The Jazz Singer” (the first feature to showcase recorded dialogue on screen). It’s a film that tackles head on the Trumpian philosophy of greed and nihilism, bankrolled by rich scumbags like the Ellisons.
To review “Digger” in its entirety will just spoil the fun, so this is spoiler free. Mexican director Alejandro Inarritu’s spectacular, audacious, almost Brechtian, movie is both an angry environmental satire and a joyous celebration of art: it sums up 2026 better than any film this year. I don’t think I’ve seen such a complete attack on the Trump political era in all its evangelical, misogynistic, climate-change-denying, grubby glory and brought to life by a wonderful (primarily non-American) ensemble cast featuring Brits like Riz Ahmed, Pip Torrens, Burn Gorman and Stephen Wright. John Goodman makes a triumphant return to the screen as terminally ill President Compson, a man who, in his last days is physically identifying with the havoc wrought on the planet through the climate crisis. The primary reason for this are (of course) the money men and the oil men, epitomised by Tom Cruise’s Digger Rockwell – a truly multi-layered, epic villain, the epitome of 21st century evil, yet similarly vulnerable. I love Cruise as an actor, I love his charisma and his commitment, and he just about pulls this off, but we should also salute his bravery as a producer, getting this thing made. The first act is sensationally entertaining, establishing a larger-than-life, yet familiar world of arrogant politicians and billionaires, ignoring scientific warnings about a world-changing, environmental disaster, and then…
JUST GO AND WATCH IT.
It’s a film about bullshit, bravado and performance with knockout production design, that is extremely funny and extremely frustrating for the first half and (if you roll with it) warm, wise and moving for the second. It’s just great to leave the cinema a little breathless and confused, yet elated, having seen something truly special. One aspect I really appreciated is that it not only displays, but also analyses, the sense of wonder and joy a work of collaborative art can create, something we maybe took for granted pre-COVID. If you leave early as some (probably right of centre) American audience members have in disgust – “It’s not like the trailer” (true) “it was preachy and boring” (watch the 27th Avengers movie instead)- you’ll miss one of the greatest endings to a movie since “Planet of the Apes”. This not a film for everyone, it’s like a 150 million dollar panto with added politics, but I’ll bet in decades to come, it’ll be seen as the “Dr Strangelove” of the 21st century.
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