Yes, Tom Cruise is back with a bang in the Oscars ring in his best performance since 1999’s Magnolia (it’s unbelievable to think it was in another millennium when Cruise last earned an acting nod).
However, Cruise ain’t gonna win nothing if the Academy voters are repelled by the massive roll of the dice of perception that Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu (himself no stranger to Oscars glory, having triumphed with both Birdman and The Revenant) takes here.
Straight off we’re in big, bold, hyper-elegant cinema territory, as Cruise’s oil emperor (baron is too small a word) Digger Rockwell wakes up in silk pyjamas in a mansion straight out of the Wes Anderson playbook. And look at Tom! Aged and pale in a flaccid fat suit, with a wispy comb-over — no one can ever say Cruise isn’t game.
The kooky Wesness continues when Digger lifts his beloved superannuated cat Maggie from the bed. Maggie is a freak of crumbling felines, and momentarily the forlorn star of the show as Digger showers her down after she shat his bed.
But there’s other shit going down at Rockwell Manor, as Ganesh (Riz Ahmed), environmental expert for Digger’s oil company, rocks up with troubling news: there’s been an explosion at a rig in Greenland (how topical) and a colossal ice shelf is heading towards the North Sea to wipe out Europe.
Before you can say catastrophic tsunami and biblical floods, the President (John Goodman, unrecognisably skinny if you haven’t seen him recently) and all his men are at Digger’s gaff in a souped-up Dr Strangelove scenario, deciding what the hell to do. At which point, the lightness of Anderson morphs to Coen Brothers on steroids.
“Blow that frozen c*** up!” blasts a military commander. “I got a Tomahawk that could blow the tits off a Russian ballerina from half way round the world!” boasts another. They’re all ranting ten to the dozen, frothing furiously like their Gatorade has been spiked with testosterone.
Goodman gets dealt some cracking comic lines and delivers them with gusto. “I have cancer of the asshole,” he tells Digger in an aside. “A lump down there the size of a racoon.”
Then just as the President explains how you get “a different perspective when death starts whispering into your anal cavity”, Iñárritu’s dice roll upends everything you think you have been watching.
It’s nothing new or revolutionary, but it’s discombobulating enough to split the audience in two as sure as Digger’s shovel would slice through a ripe watermelon — potentially cancelling Cruise’s Oscars chances. But it also turns out gradually to be a genius move.
Watching without knowing in advance about this twist/shift is the way to experience this movie. So consider this your safe space if you like a surprise, as other outlets are sure to spill the beans.
Cruise is a grandstanding hoot, raging at the world in a deep southern drawl. And just like in Magnolia, he gets to plant his cowboy boots wide apart, hand on cock, and thrust outrageously at all comers.
Ahmed is deliciously wimpy as the unravelling Ganesh, while Sandra Hüller (so good in Anatomy of a Fall and Zone of Interest) is somewhat sidelined in this character parade of grotesqueries as Digger’s monstrous sister Emma. The utterly awesome Jesse Plemons is also there in a lesser role that’s not quite enough to get his chops into.
There are beautiful aftershocks to Iñárritu’s cinematic coup as this gallops towards a heartbreaking warning about where the real world is right now with fossil fuels and climate change.
Audacious, risky, terrific fun and — for at least half the planet — the wildest ride you’ll get this year.
Digger is in cinemas from October 2
