Digger Rockwell is a Southern oil tycoon whose company sparks a global crisis in Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Digger, and Tom Cruise is barely recognizable playing him.
Cruise, 64, plays the billionaire under heavy prosthetics, with thinning white hair, a heavier frame and a thick Southern accent. The role is his first starring part outside the Top Gun and Mission: Impossible franchises since American Made in 2017 as Warner Bros. bills the film as a comedy of catastrophic proportions.
What Does Digger Rockwell Do in Digger?
Digger is an oil tycoon with immense pull inside the United States government. According to the official logline, he is the most powerful man in the world and his company causes a glacier in Greenland to shift, setting off an ecological crisis that could spiral into nuclear war.
An explosion at his Greenland rig sends a huge chunk of ice toward Europe, and President Compson (John Goodman) enlists Digger to fix the problem he helped create. He then launches a frantic mission to prove he is humanity’s savior, with Iñárritu describing the character as someone who has “seduced reality into agreeing with him.”
The trailer shows the idea in action, with Digger saying that if nature cannot be controlled, the narrative can be. He also dotes on an ailing white cat while the disaster builds, while The Hollywood Reporter says he traces his name to the shovel that built the family fortune under his granddaddy.
Riz Ahmed plays Ganesh, Sandra Hüller plays Emma Rockwell, and Michael Stuhlbarg plays the Vice President, with Jesse Plemons also in the cast.
How Did Tom Cruise Disappear Into Digger?
Iñárritu conceived the idea after finishing The Revenant in 2015 and began discussing it with Cruise around 2019, while Cruise was filming Top Gun: Maverick. Instead of sending a finished screenplay, he spent several days reading it aloud to Cruise.
Cruise told Empire the process was “a real leap into the unknown,” with the performance being now hailed as a blend of his motivational speaker from Magnolia and his prosthetics-clad studio executive from Tropic Thunder.
However, reviews are split. Digger opened with a 53% score on Rotten Tomatoes while Variety says Cruise’s acting is skillfully etched but that the film is not funny. The publication also teases a fourth-wall twist, which I will leave unspoiled for now.
Digger opens in theaters worldwide on October 2.
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