JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Tom Cruise has spent decades burnishing his rep as an action star who does his own stunts. His latest stunt? The satirical comedy "Digger." Cruise plays a foul-mouthed, cat-obsessed, disaster-causing good old boy with a pot belly.
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TOM CRUISE: (As Digger Rockwell) I wasn't expecting that.
SUMMERS: Critic Bob Mondello calls "Digger" the biggest of big swings, and not just for its star.
BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: Man, this movie goes big, big enough that the screen expands when the action gets grand, big with ideas from the impotence of governments in the face of climate change...
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RIZ AHMED: (As Nirav Ganesh) We're utterly unprotected against a disaster of this magnitude.
MONDELLO: ...To the power of art in shaping debate.
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AHMED: (As Nirav Ganesh) They already know the story.
CRUISE: (As Digger Rockwell) They know the facts. The story has yet to be told.
MONDELLO: "Digger's" marketing calls it a comedy of catastrophic proportions, and that, folks, is what underselling looks like. Filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu is swinging for the rafters, and he's got the world's biggest movie star swinging with him playing Digger Rockwell, a billionaire oil tycoon who has a problem. Well, several, actually. He has the world's saddest...
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CRUISE: (As Digger Rockwell) Take a little taste for Daddy.
MONDELLO: ...Incontinent 30-year-old cat.
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CRUISE: (As Digger Rockwell) How long would you say she has?
ROSS HATT: (As Dr. Berg) Between two weeks, five minutes.
MONDELLO: And he has an oil rig in Greenland that's unleashing an ecological disaster.
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CRUISE: (As Digger Rockwell) Mr. President, 55 minutes ago, my company informed me of the explosion on our rig.
AHMED: (As Nirav Ganesh) Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami.
MONDELLO: And that's about all I can tell you plot wise because at the half hour mark, the film takes a turn that you do not want spoiled before you see it, a turn that makes a lot of what you've already seen play differently in memory and that changes the focus of who's being accused and why we should laugh and what the stakes are or were or maybe will be.
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JOHN GOODMAN: (As President Compson) Is that all the bad news?
AHMED: (As Nirav Ganesh) Oh, there's the nuclear waste, too.
MONDELLO: So, no, I can't talk about it, but I can talk about the performances. Cruise is leaving it all on the screen, and his physical transformation is the least of it.
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CRUISE: (As Digger Rockwell) What did you just say?
MONDELLO: The screenwriters have given his oil baron a 10-minute address to angry European leaders that's pure Oscar bait, and Cruise reminds you that he was in the room when Jack Nicholson delivered his you want me on that wall speech in "A Few Good Men."
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CRUISE: (As Digger Rockwell) What would happen if I stopped drilling? You'd starve. You'd freeze to death.
MONDELLO: Nor is Cruise the only grandstander. John Goodman plays the business-coddling president with a god complex who OK'ed oil drilling in Greenland - make of that what you will - but he's not interested in taking the blame.
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GOODMAN: (As President Compson) Now, Digger here got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us out.
MONDELLO: Riz Ahmed plays a science guy who does not pull punches...
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AHMED: (As Nirav Ganesh) Mr. Rockwell is a man who would roast our children alive if he thought he could sell them for a dime.
MONDELLO: ...Even when it puts him in danger.
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AHMED: (As Nirav Ganesh) Before you officially fire me or kill me...
CRUISE: (As Digger Rockwell) I'm not gonna kill you. Got people who'd do that for me. I'm joking. Sort of.
MONDELLO: And then I would rave about Jesse Plemons, but I'm hamstrung because I cannot, in good conscience, tell you a single thing about his character. "Digger" is a tricky film to review if you like it, and I should probably acknowledge that a lot of people won't.
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) It's ridiculous. And it's scary. It's funny. And it's stupid.
MONDELLO: Satire is almost always divisive at first. Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove" is now almost universally regarded as a blistering take on the existential threat of its era. The New York Times dismissed it in 1964 as a sick joke. And the Rotten Tomatoes score on "Digger" is not going to draw audiences. But if you're up for a challenge and willing to work a little, rest assured that Iñárritu has made an artful, gorgeously cinematic provocation that offers surprises right up to its game-changing final image.
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CRUISE: (As Digger Rockwell) When all else fails, you hit 'em with the truth. You know, the hard truth - just bang, bang, bang.
MONDELLO: There were rumors floating around a few weeks ago that "Digger" was almost three hours long. Not remotely true. It's barely two hours. But you may well spend 45 minutes arguing about it afterwards, so the rumor wasn't entirely off base.
I'm Bob Mondello.
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