It’s revealing that Warner Bros. tried to erase “Coyote vs. Acme” from existence but threw its whole support behind Alejandro González Iñárritu’s annoying satire “Digger.” In Dave Green’s Looney Tunes film, the southern fried Foghorn Leghorn is the villain, a minor character who represents everything wrong in the world and has no redeeming qualities. In “Digger,” Tom Cruise also plays a villainous Foghorn Leghorn, but his version is a seductive, intriguing enigma that takes center stage. It’s the kind of movie about evil billionaires that evil billionaires would enjoy, which makes it the worst kind of movie about evil billionaires.
Tom Cruise is Digger Rockwell, an oil tycoon who only cares about two things: money and his 30-year-old cat that desperately wants to die. Digger won’t let it, because he’s a selfish man. Likewise, the people of Earth desperately want to live, but Digger won’t let them because, again, he’s a selfish man. He ignores every warning about his drilling operations in Greenland until it’s officially too late. Methane gas destroys his machines, kills his workers, and ejects a giant glacier heading towards northern Europe, with a projected death toll that can barely be imagined.
Naturally, Digger responds by protecting himself from legal liability and spinning the scenario in his favor. The boorish President Compson, played (well, mostly shouted) by John Goodman, turns to Digger to fix this crisis because it’s a lot of work and Compson has other things on his mind. Riz Ahmed plays Digger’s environmental scientist Ganesh, who gradually goes bonkers in the billionaire’s orbit, appalled by the staggering lack of humanity.
Everything in “Digger” is over the top and two-dimensional except the production design, which is over the top but multifaceted and astounding. It reflects the film’s only noteworthy storytelling decision (which I won’t ruin the specifics of) and forces us to accept that the artificiality of “Digger” is Iñárritu’s thesis.
But that doesn’t mean his thesis is smart. “Digger” argues that what people really want is to watch billionaires lampooned with slightly less depth than a late-night talk show monologue. We are powerless to stop them, but we do get to point and giggle. And that’s supposed to be enough.
“Digger” claims there are good billionaires. They’re the ones who made “Digger” and they’re willing to let us laugh so long as the commentary is impotent. The cynicism boggles the mind. Even after Iñárritu accepts their rubber stamp, and portrays the worst people in the world as meaningless cartoons, he finds a way to hold back. Wile E. Coyote got to blow up Foghorn Leghorn with a Rube Goldberg machine while a chorus sang “beep beep beep” over the 1812 Overture. Here, when we finally learn what happens to Digger Rockwell, let’s just say he gets off anticlimactically light, just as Iñárritu finally starts taking his story in ghoulish, potentially cathartic directions. The most unbelievable thing about “Digger,” sadly, is the idea that this production deserves applause. Except, again, for the production design. And maybe Tom Cruise.
Cruise hasn’t done this much caps-locked “ACTING” in many years. He certainly hasn’t been this energized since his amusing cameo in “Tropic Thunder,” where he played Digger Rockwell if Digger Rockwell was a Hollywood power player without a wacky accent. Nobody doubts Tom Cruise can captivate a crowd, and in “Digger” he certainly does, sometimes in long, show-off takes that serve no other function than to prove Tom Cruise can do it. As if performing what’s essentially live theater is as impressive a stunt as jumping out of an airplane from the top of the atmosphere.
Tom Cruise gives Iñárritu precisely what the director demands. If only the filmmaker demanded something more, something which actually warrants this film’s onanistic ovations. It’s not enough to make fun of the people destroying the world. You also have to announce you’re brilliant for doing it, that a billionaire approved your jokes and that the audience should thank you for giving them an opportunity to titter.
“Digger” is what happens when you give the week’s worst “Saturday Night Live” sketch an inexplicably large budget and delusions of grandeur. It will probably win lots of awards. I’d say it deserves the ones for production design; then again, “Backrooms” came out this year. So never mind. I guess I wouldn’t.
“Digger” opens exclusively in theaters on Oct. 2.
