'Digger' Review: As a Texas Oil Tycoon, Tom Cruise Goes Over the Top in Alejandro

By: Variety

Published: 2026-09-29T19:01:32.425308Z

Last Updated: 2026-09-29T20:07:26.839700Z

Category: Entertainment

Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Digger casts Tom Cruise as a Texas oil tycoon whose outsized ambition fuels a chaotic, often abrasive comedy about wealth, power and American excess.

• Cruise embraces the role’s theatrical scale, playing the mogul with relentless energy and unapologetic bravado.

• The film aims its satire at billionaires, political influence and the mythology of self-made success.

• Iñárritu stages the story with visual flair, but the film’s grand style can overwhelm its sharper ideas.

• Its humor is deliberately excessive, shifting between pointed social commentary and broad spectacle.

• The result is an ambitious but uneven production: frequently entertaining, sometimes exhausting, and deeply committed to making its point loudly.

Digger offers no restrained portrait of privilege. Instead, it turns its central character into a larger-than-life symbol of unchecked power, with Cruise’s performance driving nearly every scene. The film’s bombast may divide audiences, but its willingness to confront American wealth and influence gives it a clear, if heavy-handed, purpose.