Digger
★★Skip itIs Digger worth watching? (No spoilers)
There's a 9/10 movie in here somewhere, but they certainly never found it. The B plot goes nowhere, and the subplot keeps pulling you out of the movie. What wasted potential and a grossly inflated budget. Skip it.
⚠️ Spoiler warning: everything below the quick take, including the full review and ending explained, contains spoilers.
Digger review
*****SPOILERS*****
This is a 9/10 movie if you just remove the pointless "it's all just a play" plot. The missing daughter went nowhere, and the beef with the director / inclusion of the nephew added nothing to the film outside of scene after scene to take us out of the movie. What wasted potential and a grossly inflated budget.
Digger ending explained
About 30 minutes in, Digger reveals that the story of oil baron Digger Rockwell, whose drilling triggers a climate disaster, is actually a play called 'Fossil Fools' being rehearsed. Tom Cruise is really playing an actor, Curtis Markson, whose daughter's flight is missing in a storm. The disaster really did happen; the play is a satirical reenactment. Its producer is Kenny, Digger's nephew, who also runs a private security company.
In the play's finale, a ruined Digger jumps to his death from an oil rig. The opening-night audience cheers, and Curtis learns his daughter is safe. Then the audience puts on air-filter masks and walks out into a dystopian New York full of soldiers, drones and 'compliance is freedom' graffiti.
The ending reads as a statement about propaganda: by turning Digger into a cartoon villain, Kenny clears the family name while the people in power today avoid blame for the world they've created. And Kenny himself is far from innocent, it seems he has become a billionaire himself through some surveillance company operating in the shadows of the film.
My take: the play device adds nothing but scene after scene that takes you out of the movie.
Does Digger have a post-credits scene?
No. Digger has no real post-credits scene. The credits roll over footage of the flood wreckage, but there's no new scene or sequel tease.
Movies like Digger
- Don't Look Up (2021) – a climate-disaster satire that also fails miserably at achieving anything
- Birdman (2014) – Iñárritu's other movie about putting on a play
- Synecdoche, New York (2008) – a play that blurs with real life
- Dr. Strangelove (1964) – a black comedy about powerful men ending the world