Few films released this year have divided critics as dramatically as Tom Cruise and Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Digger. The dark climate satire was positioned as a major acting showcase for Cruise after years spent largely inside action franchises. Instead of running across rooftops or hanging from aircraft, he disappears beneath prosthetics to play an ageing, self-important oil magnate whose actions contribute to an environmental catastrophe.

Whether that transformation works depends almost entirely on which critic you ask.

The Digger movie 2026 currently has a 51% Tomatometer score from 259 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, while verified audiences are considerably warmer at 71%. CinemaScore, however, gave the movie a C+, suggesting theatrical audiences are also far from universally convinced. Rotten Tomatoes

That disagreement has become so central to the film that Warner Bros actively turned the conflicting reactions into a marketing campaign, presenting opposite responses such as “brilliant” and “baffling” before telling viewers to decide for themselves.

Tom Cruise in Digger: What Is the Movie Actually Like?

At its simplest, the film follows oil tycoon Digger Rockwell as an environmental disaster linked to his business threatens catastrophic consequences. But the movie does not behave like a straightforward disaster film. Iñárritu pushes the story towards farce, political satire and eventually metafiction, questioning capitalism, climate responsibility and even the usefulness of satire itself. Revealing much more would spoil one of the film's central structural surprises.

The tom cruise digger movie is therefore deliberately uncomfortable. Its characters are oversized, its humour is abrasive and its political ideas are delivered with very little interest in subtlety. That approach explains why some critics see a bold original film while others see an expensive exercise in self-importance.

Cruise is the element on which there is considerably more agreement. Even reviewers who dislike the movie have recognised the commitment of his performance. He abandons the invincible Ethan Hunt persona, wears heavy prosthetics and embraces an intentionally grotesque character rather than trying to preserve his conventional leading-man image.

For Tom Cruise latest movie, that alone makes the performance worth discussing.

Digger Review Ratings: What Major Critics Gave the Film

The numerical reviews reveal just how extraordinary the split has become.

Hindustan Times awarded the film four stars, praising Cruise’s return to more character-driven acting and describing Iñárritu’s film as an unusually audacious mainstream satire.  The Indian Express also gave it 4/5, arguing that Cruise’s willingness to dismantle his carefully maintained movie-star persona becomes central to the film's larger discussion about performance and art. The Indian Express

Time Out likewise awarded four out of five stars, praising the film's ambition and describing Cruise’s performance as part caricature, part surprisingly vulnerable character study. Time Out Worldwide

Radio Times also landed at 4/5, calling the movie dense, unpredictable and likely to irritate as many viewers as it impresses. Tollbit

The Independent reported that The Telegraph also awarded four stars, while its own critic went in the opposite direction and gave the film two stars. The Independent That is essentially the entire Digger debate in miniature.

Some Critics See a Major Tom Cruise Performance

The strongest reviews tend to separate the lead performance from Cruise's recent blockbuster identity. For decades, audiences have increasingly associated him with physical commitment: motorbike jumps, helicopter sequences, high-altitude stunts and the increasingly elaborate spectacle of Mission: Impossible. Here, the risk is different.

The Digger movie 2026 asks Cruise to look ridiculous, behave unpleasantly and surrender much of the heroic control that normally defines his screen presence. The Indian Express gave the film 4/5 and framed the role as one of the actor's biggest creative departures in decades. Hindustan Times similarly awarded four stars and argued that the movie reminds audiences of Cruise's abilities as an actor rather than simply as an action star. 

Associated Press offered a more measured but still positive assessment, awarding three out of four stars. Its review found the satire uneven but praised the visual ambition and the way Cruise's performance develops beyond its initial caricature. Even the overall Rotten Tomatoes consensus acknowledges that this is a major swing. Its current consensus describes the movie as stylistically daring but says its elaborate construction prevents some of its comedy from landing. 

Other Critics Thought the Satire Simply Did Not Work

The negative reviews attack many of the exact qualities praised by the positive ones. The Guardian gave the film 2/5, with Peter Bradshaw criticising its satire as shallow, laborious and overly pleased with itself. He acknowledged individual moments that work but argued that the film's major structural turn does not rescue it.  The Financial Times also awarded two stars, finding ambition and flashes of effective satire but arguing that the movie becomes too confident in its own cleverness. 

The Independent reached the same 2/5 verdict. Its review praised Cruise as magnetic and dependable but argued that the satire lacks the brutality required to make its political targets genuinely sting. At the harshest end of the spectrum, The Boston Globe gave the movie zero stars, calling it the worst film of Cruise's career.  People also reported that New York Post critic Johnny Oleksinski awarded it zero stars, illustrating just how far the response stretches from the four-star enthusiasm elsewhere. 

Why Digger Is So Divisive

The problem—or appeal—is that subtlety is clearly not what Iñárritu is pursuing. Oil dependency, climate change, corporate greed, political vanity and public hypocrisy are amplified to grotesque levels. John Goodman plays the US president with similar exaggeration, while Riz Ahmed frequently acts as the comparatively rational figure inside the chaos.

The first part of the movie invites viewers to treat the billionaire at its centre as a monstrous symbol of corporate excess.

Then the film complicates its own satire.

That decision is likely to determine whether audiences leave thinking they have seen something unusually ambitious or something unnecessarily convoluted. The Tom Cruise digger movie does not seem designed to offer the comfortable rhythm of a conventional Hollywood comedy. It wants viewers to question the story, the storyteller and even their response to what they have just watched. For some critics, that makes the movie richer.

For others, it makes it insufferable.

Warner Bros Turned the Bad Reviews Into Advertising

The studio quickly recognised that trying to hide the divided reception was unlikely to work. Instead, Warner Bros released an unusual campaign built around the disagreement itself.

One advertisement paired contradictory reactions including “magnificent” and “insufferable”, “brilliant” and “baffling”, before concluding with the message: “Same film. Different truth.” The Independent reported that the reactions used in that particular campaign came from entertainment journalists and early social-media responses rather than traditional long-form review excerpts. 

It was an inventive response to a movie sitting close to the Fresh/Rotten boundary. But the campaign did not produce a strong opening weekend. The film earned about $8 million in the US and Canada and $12 million internationally, for approximately $20 million worldwide during its opening weekend. Associated Press reported a production cost of at least $125 million, with some estimates closer to $150 million, before a substantial marketing campaign.  That makes its commercial prospects considerably more difficult than its critical reputation alone.

Audience Ratings Tell a Slightly Different Story

The professional critics are almost evenly divided, but public scores are more favourable.

As of the latest update:

• Rotten Tomatoes critics: 51%
• Rotten Tomatoes verified audience: 71%
• IMDb: 7.3/10
• CinemaScore: C+

The 71% audience score suggests viewers who chose to see the film have generally responded more positively than critics. IMDb's 7.3/10 rating is stronger still, although user-based platforms use different methodologies and should not be directly equated with professional review aggregators. 

The C+ CinemaScore complicates that picture. C+ is generally a weak result for a major wide release.  So there is no single audience verdict either.

Is Tom Cruise Latest Movie Worth Watching?

As a conventional crowd-pleaser, probably not. As an unusual star vehicle, it is considerably more interesting. Tom Cruise latest movie asks one of Hollywood's most controlled stars to embrace physical ugliness, absurdity and a character whose worldview is designed to repel the audience. Even several negative reviews accept that Cruise remains compelling within the chaos.

The film itself is far more difficult to recommend universally. Its humour is aggressive. Its environmental politics are obvious. Its 129-minute runtime gives Iñárritu plenty of space to expand ideas that some viewers may feel should have been expressed more economically. And its major narrative choices deliberately risk alienating people who were enjoying the simpler satire established earlier.

Yet the divided ratings also reveal something rare. A major studio spent well over $100 million on an original film from an Oscar-winning director starring one of the world's most recognisable actors—and critics cannot even agree whether it deserves zero stars or four. That is more interesting than a merely mediocre movie. The strongest description of Digger may therefore be neither masterpiece nor disaster. It is an audacious, messy and confrontational film with a committed central performance, striking filmmaking and a tendency to explain its ideas at maximum volume.

Whether that sounds exciting or exhausting will probably predict how you respond to it. For Tom Cruise, it also represents a meaningful break from the franchise machinery that has dominated the latter part of his career. The box office suggests audiences have not rushed to follow him there, but the wildly conflicting reviews ensure the movie is unlikely to disappear without debate.

Review verdict: 3/5 — ambitious, visually confident and powered by a fearless Cruise performance, but its satire is so loud and structurally complicated that its ideas do not always land as cleanly as intended.