I haven’t seen Bardo, to be honest i wasn’t even aware of it before… now, but whatever, i was gonna see Inarritu’s Digger anyway, especially with the premise of Cruise acting against type.
Here he plays Digger Rockwell, a petrol mogul from Texas that lives in its opulent mansion, tending to his absurdly old and withered cat while ignoring the disaster brewing on some of its rigs… until he can’t anymore, as the situation on an Artic rig of his has exploded, resulting in a gigantic glacier breaking away and headed to Europe, where it would cause constant tsunamis.
The US President is called in, alongside many experts and politicians to find out any sort of solution in how to deal with the glacier, so it’s up to Digger to save the world he almost destroyed…. or is it?
There’s no way to discuss properly the film even further because that would give away the movie entirely and spoil the “twist”… actually the entire premise.
But that isn’t even the issues, as the “twist” happens early on, you can actually kinda assume it if you’re familiar mwith Inarritu’s body of work, and there’s actually more to it.
The problem is that, the attempt at satirizing modern satires about the climate crisis in how…. kinda feels hollow because ultimately it adds nothing to the conversation either, and it becomes enamored with its own deliberate farce (and playing around with its incredible cast) to the point it becomes the very thing it supposedly satirizes, so much that ultimately any potential of the “twist” serving as a way to actually say something becomes nill.
Disappointing.
And yet, there’s still some fun to be had with/in Digger, in spite and because of its empty excesses, of how it sadly crumples under its own ambition.
