'Digger' Officially Splits Critics With Divisive Rotten Tomatoes Score

When it was first announced that Tom Cruise would be teaming up with Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu for Digger, it seemed like the stage was being set for the Mission: Impossible star to finally win the Best Actor Oscar. The trailers for the dark satire, where Cruise plays a wealthy oil tycoon, showcased the actor’s transformation under heavy makeup and prosthetics. However, early word of mouth was mixed, and the film’s Rotten Tomatoes score now suggests Cruise might be out of the Oscar race before it even began.

Digger has debuted on Rotten Tomatoes with a 52% rating based on 67 reviews. MovieWeb’s Charles Papadapoulos gave the film a 3.5 out of 5 review and said: “There are several points in which Digger feels like it’s not working, but the ultimate effort to compile these themes into a sprawling narrative, cognizant of its own contradictions, is admirable, even if not entirely effective.” Matt Singer of ScreenCrush shared a similar sentiment in his 5/10 review, saying Digger is “Strange, silly, surprising, and confounding — but absolutely never boring.”

Tom Cruise as Digger Rockwell in Digger
Warner Bros. Pictures
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Pictures

Tom Cruise’s transformative performance has been at the heart of Digger‘s marketing, and it appears to be dividing critics. Kristen Lopez of Film Maven gave Digger a D+ rating and said, “Cruise unfortunately isn’t given enough meaty material to rise above the hamminess of the role.” Ian Sandwell of Digital Spy gave Digger a 3/5 and said “It’s flawed, for sure, yet with a committed Tom Cruise at its centre, it’s the kind of movie you should see to make up your own mind.”

A common point of comparison for Digger has been Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 masterpiece, Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Slashfilm‘s Bill Bria gave the movie a 7/10 and said “As a satire, Digger may be too impassioned to be amusing. Yet it’s this bold passion which gives Digger a bite and a power that hasn’t been seen since Kubrick’s own screed.” IndieWire‘s David Ehrlich was not as kind, giving the movie a C+ rating and calling Digger “a mega-budget Dr. Strangelove riff so detached from human truth that its most believable character is a one-eyed animatronic cat named Maggie.”

Digger is now the lowest-rated film from director Alejandro G. Iñárritu on Rotten Tomatoes and appears to be the first major misfire of this year’s awards season race. Warner Bros.’ hope of Digger being a Best Picture nominee is seemingly all but over, with William Bibbiani of The Wrap summing up the film as “what happens when you give the week’s worst Saturday Night Live sketch an inexplicably large budget and delusions of grandeur.” This puts more pressure on Dune: Part Three to be Warner Bros. Warner Bros.’ big financial hit after a rough year at the box office and to serve as the studio’s major awards contender.