Digger (2026) Review: Tom Cruise Is All In; the Film Isn't — Iñárritu's Big, Messy Dr. Strangelove Riff

Alejandro G. Iñárritu hands Tom Cruise his strangest role in years — an oil baron racing to undo the disaster he caused — and critics agree on the performance far more than on the movie around it.

Digger is the first film Tom Cruise has made since closing out Mission: Impossible, and it could hardly be further from Ethan Hunt. Alejandro G. Iñárritu, the director of Birdman and The Revenant, casts him as Digger Rockwell, an oil tycoon whose drilling accident cracks a massive glacier loose off Greenland and who then sets out, at full volume, to prove he is the man who can save the world from the catastrophe he started. Warner Bros. opens it in U.S. theaters on October 2, after a Royal Film Performance premiere in London's Leicester Square on September 22. It runs 129 minutes and is rated R.

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The reviews landed this week, and they are split down the middle. As of October 1 the film sits at 52% on Rotten Tomatoes from 140 critics, with an average rating of 6.1 out of 10, and 46 on Metacritic from 43 critics, which Metacritic labels "mixed or average." Screen Rant notes that the score ends a nine-year run in which none of Cruise's films had dipped below 60% on Rotten Tomatoes; the last one to do it was The Mummy in 2017. Early user ratings are kinder, at 7.3 on IMDb, though that number is built on premiere-week votes and will move once the film is in wide release.

The tone is the dividing line. Iñárritu and his co-writers, Alexander Dinelaris Jr., Nicolás Giacobone and Sabina Berman, from a story he developed with Berman and Jez Butterworth, are going for pitch-black satire in the key of Dr. Strangelove: a billionaire's ego, a compliant White House and a planet that is literally coming apart. John Goodman plays the president, Michael Stuhlbarg his vice president, Riz Ahmed a scientist and Jesse Plemons a man named Kenny, with Sandra Hüller as Digger's half-sister and business partner, Emma. Writing for World of Reel, Jordan Ruimy calls the result "Dr. Strangelove filtered through 21st-century theatrics," and means it as a compliment. IndieWire's David Ehrlich, who gave it a C+, uses the same comparison against it, calling it "a mega-budget Dr. Strangelove riff so detached from human truth that its most believable character is a one-eyed animatronic cat named Maggie."

The harshest notices go after the humor. In The Hollywood Reporter, David Rooney calls Cruise and Iñárritu "a match made in showboating hell in a shallow satire insufferably pleased with itself," and RogerEbert.com's Robert Daniels finds the film devoid of substance. TheWrap's William Bibbiani is blunter still, likening it to "the week's worst Saturday Night Live sketch" given "an inexplicably large budget and delusions of grandeur." Several reviews, including Screen Rant's, single out a third-act twist as the point where the satire's footing gets unstable, so if you plan to see it, it is worth avoiding plot discussions until you have.

What almost nobody disputes is Cruise. Even reviewers who disliked the film treat his performance as the reason to buy a ticket. Screen Rant's critic, who gave the film 8 out of 10, describes "showy flashes of comedically over-the-top hubris while also finding little moments of humanity," and Digital Spy's Ian Sandwell (3 out of 5) calls it "flawed, for sure, yet with a committed Tom Cruise at its centre, it's the kind of movie you should see to make up your own mind." It is a genuinely different register for him: a character who is all appetite and self-regard, played for laughs and for menace at the same time, and a reminder that before the stunts he was the actor of Magnolia and Tropic Thunder. Not everyone is persuaded. Film Maven's Kristen Lopez, giving it a D+, thinks Cruise "isn't given enough meaty material to rise above the hamminess of the role."

The craft is where the money shows. Iñárritu reunites with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, who won Oscars for Gravity, Birdman and The Revenant, and they shot the whole film in VistaVision on 35mm, at Pinewood Studios in England between November 2024 and May 2025. Ruimy singles out "a jaw-dropping 10-minute oner," in keeping with the long takes the pair built Birdman around, and describes the film overall as having "stunning visuals, great performances" and holding attention "right up to the final frame." If you go, this is a case for the biggest screen you can find; the format is part of the point, and the film is also playing in IMAX.

That ambition comes at a price. Reported budgets range from about $125 million to as much as $180 million depending on the outlet, and pre-release tracking has been sliding: Wikipedia, citing trade estimates, puts the projected U.S. and Canada opening at $12 million to $15 million, while World of Reel reported tracking under $10 million on more than 3,500 screens. It opens the same weekend as Verity, the Colleen Hoover thriller with Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson, which has drawn similarly divided reviews. For an original, R-rated satire at this price, the opening weekend will matter for how much studios are willing to bankroll this kind of swing again.

Our verdict: Digger earns a FilmRated Score of 61 out of 100. That is above its Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic numbers, because the craft and the lead performance are real, but well short of a recommendation for everyone. Slashfilm's Bill Bria puts the case for it best, arguing that its "bold passion" gives Digger "a bite and a power that hasn't been seen since Kubrick's own screed," while ScreenCrush's Matt Singer, at 5 out of 10, sums up the experience as "strange, silly, surprising, and confounding — but absolutely never boring." See it on a large screen if you want to watch Cruise take his biggest risk in years and you enjoy satire that would rather overreach than play safe. If you need a comedy to land its jokes, or a message delivered with a lighter hand, wait for streaming.