UPDATE 3: Digger is bombing at the box office with Tom Cruise’s worst opening in nearly twenty years.
UPDATE 2: Warner Bros. has answered the reviews with a new spot telling fans to decide for themselves.
UPDATE: An insider calls Digger the creative accommodation keeping Tom Cruise happy, as De Luca and Abdy stay at Warner Bros.
Tom Cruise’s Digger is getting hammered by critics.
Reviews for the Alejandro González Iñárritu climate change satire arrived Tuesday, and the movie sits at a Rotten 52% on Rotten Tomatoes from 79 reviews ahead of its release in theaters this Friday, October 2.
Cruise stars as Digger Rockwell, an oil billionaire and the most powerful man in the world, who sets out on a frantic mission to prove he is humanity’s savior before the disaster he unleashed destroys everything. Riz Ahmed co-stars.
The stakes are big for Warner Bros. and Legendary, as the studio is coming off a summer where its box office dropped 76%, and an insider recently told Cosmic Book News that all eyes are on Digger, calling the movie Cruise’s “Oscar lock.”
The audience score goes live when the movie opens Friday.
Saturday am update: Rotten Tomatoes Score has dropped to 51%, and the audience score is at 71%.
What The Reviews Say
Critics agree on one thing: Cruise goes all in. Even many of the negative reviews single out his performance as the reason to see the movie, and Riz Ahmed picks up praise as a scene stealer.
The movie around Cruise is where the split happens. The positive reviews call Digger audacious, wild, and one of a kind. The negative reviews call it bloated, exhausting, and too pleased with itself.
More than one critic brings up Dr. Strangelove. Some mean it as a compliment. Others say Iñárritu comes nowhere close.
The Negative
The complaints repeat from review to review: the satire is obvious, the volume never comes down, and the movie thinks it is smarter than its audience. The New York Post went as low as zero stars.
“You can tell that [Tom Cruise and Alejandro González Iñárritu] think their new film is urgent. And in a way, it is. Audiences will urgently want to leave after the first five minutes.” – New York Post
“The most disappointing film of the year: an exasperatingly shallow, laborious, self-congratulatory satire with a trick up its sleeve, featuring very good actors giving not very good performances.” – The Guardian
“‘Digger’ is what happens when you give the week’s worst ‘Saturday Night Live’ sketch an inexplicably large budget and delusions of grandeur.” – TheWrap
“I was reminded of colossal misfires like Damien Chazelle’s Babylon and David O. Russell’s Amsterdam, bloated movies by directors so drunk on their exalted reputations they forgot there was an audience to consider.” – The Hollywood Reporter
“It makes the movie, however unintentionally, seem to be about nothing so much as Tom Cruise taking on this role, and Iñárritu erecting the edifice for him to stand on. And that’s a tone-deaf mistake.” – Variety
The Positive
The good reviews come back to Cruise again and again. The performance gets called the biggest swing of his career, and for these critics, the size of the movie is the point.
“Audacious, risky, terrific fun and, for at least half the planet, the wildest ride you’ll get this year.” – London Evening Standard
“What should be talked about is Cruise’s spectacle of a performance. He’s better here than even in his great turn in Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘Magnolia.’ That is saying a lot.” – San Jose Mercury News
“Wearing facial prosthetics, a faux beer belly and a Texas-sized twang, Cruise pushes his own considerable boundaries and reminds that the dude can still put on an acting masterclass when he wants.” – USA Today
“When Cruise is clambering all over the set, delivering thunderous lectures on the oil industry, I couldn’t help grinning at the gargantuan scale of his performance, the conviction of the script’s grim environmental message, and Iñárritu’s antic style.” – BBC
“Screw jumping off mountains, satirizing the men in charge with this level of viciousness feels like the biggest risk of Tom Cruise’s career. But it pays off brilliantly.” – Consequence
