Digger, the first collaboration between Tom Cruise and two-time Oscar-winning director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, had its world premiere in London on September 22 ahead of its theatrical release on October 2. Written by Alejandro G. Iñárritu with Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris and Sabina Berman, and shot in the UK with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, the film stars Cruise as Digger Rockwell, a mining and oil magnate confronting the environmental and corporate fallout of his own empire, alongside Sandra Hüller, John Goodman, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jesse Plemons, Riz Ahmed and Emma D’Arcy.
Few films this year have split critics as sharply. Digger currently sits at 52% on Rotten Tomatoes and in the low-to-mid 40s on Metacritic, numbers that mask just how far apart the actual reviews are, ranging from outright raves to some of the harshest pans of Cruise’s career.
The film follows Digger as he is forced to publicly reckon with the damage his industry has caused, building toward a centerpiece sequence in which he addresses the European Parliament in an assembly hall built to evoke the Roman Senate. The sequence features a ten-minute monologue in which Digger admits his own guilt while arguing that the blame belongs to society collectively, not to him alone. Multiple reviews single out the sequence as the film’s most striking moment.
The Hollywood Reporter’s David Rooney delivered one of the most scathing reviews, writing that Digger is “a climate crisis satire so smug and bombastic it makes Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up seem almost innocuous,” and calling Tom Cruise and Iñárritu “a match made in showboating hell in a shallow satire insufferably pleased with itself.”
Rooney argued that the film is “basically what happens when you put two outsize egos together with nobody holding the reins to keep their most self-indulgent impulses in check.” However, he did carve out praise for the European Parliament scene, calling it the film’s “best scene” and one that allows Cruise to be “simultaneously combative and charming.” Notably, Rooney placed the blame for the film’s exhausting effect on Iñárritu and his co-writers rather than on Cruise.
Variety’s Owen Gleiberman was similarly torn. He credited Tom Cruise directly, writing that “on its own terms, Cruise’s acting in Digger is well-played and skillfully etched. It’s fun… to see him cut loose,” while still concluding that the film is “bombastically self-important” and arguing that it “seem[s] to be about nothing so much as Tom Cruise taking on this role.” Gleiberman called that “a tone-deaf mistake” given the film’s climate-crisis subject matter.
Deadline’s review stood apart as one of the film’s strongest defenses, comparing it to “the kind of adventurous films in cinema’s groundbreaking era of the 70s” and calling it hard to easily define. The review singled out Cruise’s range as “undeniable” and “off the charts,” specifically praising the same ten-minute European Parliament monologue highlighted by other outlets. It also argued that “Iñárritu again proves he is one of the most original and fascinating filmmakers working today.”
Reactions elsewhere ranged just as widely. The Los Angeles Times called the film “a bizarre stunt made on a big studio budget,” describing it as “a self-conscious hybrid of Stanley Kubrick and Bertolt Brecht.” The Globe and Mail was far less generous, calling it “loud, ugly and forever oblivious to its own shortcomings,” while Slant Magazine described it as “a rambunctious gathering of mostly talented people doing the worst work of their careers” that still “manages to be a shameless Tom Cruise ego stroke.”
TheWrap was blunter still, writing that “Digger is what happens when you give the week’s worst Saturday Night Live sketch an inexplicably large budget and delusions of grandeur.” Empire’s Olly Richards focused his criticism on the film’s self-absorption, writing that its chief problem is “that it appears more concerned with itself than with the audience.”
Even within the trade press, critics anticipated the divide before it fully played out. Variety awards columnist Clayton Davis wrote ahead of the film’s wider release that “Digger is not what people are expecting, and how audiences react may be the ultimate test of Tom Cruise’s star power,” adding, “I respect the swing and what Alejandro González Iñárritu is going for. Tom Cruise’s performance ranks among his career best.”
That sentiment was echoed by several critics reacting to early screenings, including Mike Ryan, who wrote that Cruise “is going for it,” and Chris Gore of Film Threat, who called it “the biggest swing of Cruise’s career.” Others, such as Inverse’s Hoai-Tran Bui, described a more mixed personal reaction, writing, “I wasn’t a devoted Iñárritu hater before this but now I kind of get it.”
On Tom Cruise’s performance specifically, nearly every review, positive or negative, agreed on one thing: he is fully committed. Speaking about the role himself, Cruise has called it one of the toughest of his career. Even critics who found the film insufferable as a whole, including Rooney at The Hollywood Reporter, stopped short of blaming Cruise for the film’s shortcomings, instead directing that criticism toward Iñárritu’s direction and the screenplay itself.
Taken together, the reviews describe a film that has become exactly what its own marketing has leaned into, with an ad campaign reportedly encouraging audiences to “decide for yourself” after being called “unpleasant” and “baffling.” Whether viewed as one of the most audacious studio satires in years or a bloated vanity project weighed down by its own self-importance, Digger has emerged as one of the most genuinely divisive films of the year, with Tom Cruise’s performance standing as the one element nearly everyone agrees is worth discussing.
The critical response also highlights the unusual position Digger occupies. Its reception is not simply divided between praise and criticism of Cruise, but between different interpretations of what Iñárritu is attempting to do with the material. Supportive responses have emphasized the film’s ambition, Cruise’s commitment and its willingness to embrace an unconventional structure, while negative reviews have focused on its tone, scale and perceived self-importance.
At the center of that divide is the film’s approach to its climate-crisis subject matter. For some critics, the heightened satire and oversized performances are part of the point. For others, those same choices undermine the subject and make the film feel disconnected from the seriousness of the issues it addresses. The European Parliament sequence has become a particularly clear example of this disagreement, with critics on both sides identifying it as a defining moment while drawing very different conclusions about its effectiveness.
For Planet of Films, the most notable aspect of the early critical response is the degree of disagreement surrounding the film rather than any single consensus. Digger is clearly generating strong reactions, with critics variously responding to its ambition, its unusual tone, Iñárritu’s direction and Cruise’s willingness to take on a demanding role. The consistency in the reviews is that Cruise is committed to the performance, even when critics strongly disagree about the film built around him.
With a 52% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes and a Metacritic score of 46, the aggregate numbers point to a mixed critical reception, but the individual reviews reveal a much wider range of responses. Digger has become a film that critics are debating rather than simply agreeing upon, making the reception itself part of the conversation surrounding its theatrical release.
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Film Details: Digger
Director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu
Writers: Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Sabina Berman
Cast: Tom Cruise, Sandra Hüller, John Goodman, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jesse Plemons, Riz Ahmed, Emma D’Arcy
Genre: Satire / Dark Comedy
Cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki
Country: United Kingdom (production)
Release Date: October 2, 2026
