Digger (2026)    Warner Bros./Comedy    RT: 129 minutes    Rated R (pervasive language)    Director: Alejandro G. Inarritu    Screenplay: Alejandro G. Inarritu, Alexander Dinelaris, Nicolas Giacobone and Sabina Berman    Music: Cosmo Sheldrake    Cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki    Release date: October 2, 2026 (US)    Cast: Tom Cruise, Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Huller, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jesse Plemons, Robert John Burke, Emma D’Arcy, Burn Gorman, Sophie Wilde, Pip Torrens, Mercedes Hernandez, Danny Kirrane, Corey Johnson.

Rating: NO STARS!!!

WARNING: THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS!

 It’s kind of difficult to describe Digger without revealing an early twist. It goes a long way towards explaining the director’s intent. So if you plan to see it and want to go in cold, you should stop reading now.

 That being said, I strongly recommend NOT seeing Digger. It is, in my never humble opinion, the worst movie of the year. I don’t give out “NO STARS!!!” ratings arbitrarily. If I do, the movie has to be particularly heinous. It is! It’s smug, pretentious, shrill and obnoxious. The characters, especially the title one played by Tom Cruise, are annoying. Cruise’s character, an oil tycoon by the name of Digger, hasn’t a single redeeming quality which I suppose is precisely the point. Still, I find it hard to watch something where I actively hate the main character.

 So who’s responsible for this crime against cinema? That would be Alejandro G. Inarritu, the same guy that gave us the undeserving Best Picture winner Birdman. It’s important to keep this in mind because it helps the weird twist make sense. I’ll get to it shortly. The plot, such as it is, centers on Digger, a truly awful person who wields more power than one man should. He’s preoccupied with his dying pet cat, the only living being on the planet who doesn’t hate him (maybe). A stupid, selfish business decision on his part causes the start of a global catastrophe. He goes into overdrive trying to prevent it while publicly trying to shift the blame away from himself.

 And NOW [drum roll please], the BIG TWIST! It’s your last chance to bow out. [Dramatic pause] Okay, here we go. NONE of what you are seeing is real. It’s a final rehearsal for a play called Fossil Fuels. Digger is really an actor named Curtis Markson. It’s just hours until opening night and he’s dealing with a lot. He keeps holding things up with his insecurities as an actor. He’s also dealing with a family crisis. It’s driving the director (Wilde, Talk to Me) nuts. Like I said, this is revealed early on. There might be another twist or two, but I’m not telling. I have to leave something for viewers to discover on their own.

 I’d like to share a comment somebody posted under my capsule review on my Facebook page: “Damn, you went [off] on this movie the same way Ebert went [off] on North.” (Good one, Victor). I’d rather watch North again than Digger. I hated every single second of it. And it’s not that I didn’t understand what Inarritu was going for. I did which makes it that much worse. Clearly, he’s going for dark political satire in the vein of Dr. Strangelove. Digger is powerful enough to have the ear of the President (Goodman, The Big Lebowski) who’s recently been diagnosed with “a**hole cancer”. The movie spends a fair amount of time showing Digger meeting and strategizing with the President and his cabinet. They do a lot of yelling. I kept waiting for somebody to say “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room.” Like everything else here, the humor doesn’t land. It’s like the movie exists in a vacuum.

 I can’t really say the acting in Digger is terrible. The characters, that’s another story. I didn’t even like the cat, creepy and obviously mechanical. Cruise can do drama. It just takes the right director. He was amazing in PTA’s Magnolia (1999). Here, he’s just ridiculous. He struts around in a balding wig and unconvincing old age makeup. He’s never NOT Tom Cruise though. Again, I’m sure this is precisely the point, but it just didn’t work for me. Goodman’s character is awful too. He’s a crude, bombastic blowhard with an IQ clearly in the double-digits (hmmm). The cast also includes Sandra Huller (Anatomy of a Fall) as Digger’s horrible half-sister and Riz Ahmed (Rogue One) as the wimpy company safety chief trying to stop Digger from making things worse to no avail.

 I’m not going to blame the movie’s failure on the actors. They play the characters as written. They’re written as terrible people. That might be the only thing done right in Digger. It’s still an unwatchable mess though. It has a drab color scheme throughout most of it. The characters look hideous. 90% of it is people yelling at the tops of their lungs. I started developing a headache about 20 minutes in.

 I was worried Digger would be a train wreck. It certainly looked that way in the trailer. It’s not. It’s a collision between two train wrecks. It’s loud, unfunny, heavy-handed and in love with itself. Two words, artistic masturbation. Digger should be buried in a landfill.