Reviews are now out for Alejandro Inarittu’s “Digger” and the divisive first reactions the other day have now carried over to the reviews.
With 103 reviews counted, the film sits at 53% (6.1/10) on Rotten Tomatoes, and the scores are all over the place – some giving it an 8/10 or 9/10, others scoring it nearly zero, and some decidedly in the middle. Its worse on Metacritic with a 44/100.
One thing that’s common among all the reviews is that the movie certainly swings for the fences, trying some stuff that either works or doesn’t depending upon your perspective, as opposed to being something bland.
Here’s a sampling of reviews:
“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.” – Liz Shannon Miller, Consequence
“It’s like being trapped inside a tuba for two hours — and I don’t just mean the over-insistent score by Cosmo Sheldrake. Everything is an underline. Every line a shout, every glance a grimace. It’s all expectoration, no breath.” – Bilge Ebiri, Vulture
“Cruise has always been best in portraying extremes of male ego. His Digger will no doubt join those ranks. But, like the film, it’s the quieter, foreboding moments of his performance that stick with you.” – Jake Coyle, AP
“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.” – Nicholas Barber, BBC
“All these preening, obnoxiously self-satisfied moments, and so many more, add up to a movie so convinced of its own brilliance that it cannot see it is in fact the most banal variety of idiot: loud, ugly and forever oblivious to its own shortcomings.” – Barry Hertz, Globe and Mail
“When you’re watching a film that doesn’t really seem to work, which then voluntarily indulges the suggestion that its very existence might be completely pointless — well, then, why did any of us, filmmaker or audience, bother in the first place?” – Clarisse Loughrey, Independent
“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.” – Johnny Oleksinski, New York Post
“A tedious satire, slamming capitalistic greed, anti-environmental profiteering, rampant corruption, and horrid narcissism with all the bluntness of the shovel its protagonist reveres.” – Nick Schager, The Daily Beast
“‘Digger’ is what happens when you give the week’s worst ‘Saturday Night Live’ sketch an inexplicably large budget and delusions of grandeur.” – William Bibbiani, The Wrap
“Digger” is a mega-budget “Dr. Strangelove” riff so detached from human truth that its most believable character is a one-eyed animatronic cat named Maggie.” – David Ehrlich, IndieWire
“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.” – David Rooney, THR
“Big swings can win you games, make balls sail out of parks, get folks standing and cheering at witnessing someone going for it with all they’ve got. They can also result in the deafening whoosh of a massive swing-and-a-miss.” – David Fear, Rolling Stone
“Cruise gets to grandstand and overact in downright embarrassing ways, chewing the scenery with impunity. And there’s a lot of scenery for him to chew: This film was shot in VistaVision.” – Odie Henderson, Boston Globe
“Digger” opens this Friday and, despite strong promotional efforts from Cruise, projections for the movie have actually slid from where they were a few weeks ago even as speculation has risen over the film’s official $135 million budget.
