Digger

Call Alejandro G Iñárritu’s matryoshka doll of an eco-disaster movie many things – and people will – but you can’t call it unambitious or half-hearted. 

At a time when America’s double-talking politicos refuse to point out when the emperor has no clothes on, Digger parades him around pointing at the jiggly bits with a big pointer. Subtle? Nope. Mordantly funny and wildly surprising? Definitely. Some will find its ‘I’m a bit mad, me’ energy exhausting. I lapped up every bonkers moment. 

An elaborate meta-narrative that jack-knifes in ways I’m sworn to keep under wraps, Digger is, of course, Tom Cruise’s much-heralded Return To Proper Acting. As the larger-than-life Digger Rockwell, a Texan oilman hoping his personal vet can keep his beloved but disgustingly necrotic cat alive a little longer (‘He has anywhere between two weeks and five minutes’), he’s buried beneath prosthetics and gives a cartoonish, if thoroughly enjoyable portrayal of alpha-dog machismo and ‘drill, baby drill!’ enthusiasm for the black stuff. His mansion, an ornate yet obscene assembly of taxidermied animals, heavy weaponry and stunning, Ansel Adams-y views, could be Skyfall production designer Dennis Gassner’s best Bond villain lair yet.

Subtle? Nope. Mordantly funny and wildly surprising? Definitely

But if Cruise wins his Oscar for Digger, it’ll be for the quieter side to this atonal, tuba blast of a film: a more human, fragile and touching performance that plays in a similar register to Michael Keaton’s in Birdman. 

The screenplay, by Sabina Berman, Jez Butterworth and Alexander Dinelaris, swiftly presents Digger with the consequences of all his drilling and plundering. A crack has appeared in the Arctic ice shelf, a massive city-sized chunk has broken off and is drifting towards Europe. Mass fatalities are inevitable. Soon, the flatulent, raging US President (John Goodman spitting out dialogue like a human sprinkler) and his cabinet are around Digger’s boardroom table trying to figure out who to blame and what lie to spin to the Europeans. His company environmentalist (an excellent Riz Ahmed) tries his best to share the cold hard facts with them. ‘They know the facts,’ asserts Digger. ‘The story is yet to be told.’

What follows is not just that story – or at least, Digger’s wild attempts to spin it as an even bigger catastrophe unfolds – but a deeper point about how stories shape the ways we process our fears and anger, as well as the compromises involved in telling them. 

Iñárritu is shaving against the grain of that old cliché about comedy being tragedy plus time. He’s getting the comedy in first. It’s uncomfortable, it’s bombastic, but don’t listen to anyone who tells you it isn’t funny.  

In cinemas worldwide Fri Oct 2.