Tom Cruise’s ‘Digger’ Slammed by Critics as “Massive Swing-and-a-Miss”

Tom Cruise’s latest film Digger is proving to be one of the most divisive movies of the year, with many critics giving it scathing reviews.

The Hollywood legend plays the title role of Digger Rockwell, an oil magnate whose drilling company causes a natural disaster that threatens to wipe out much of the world. The film, which also stars John Goodman and Riz Ahmed , held its world premiere in London last week, attended by the Prince and Princess of Wales. The embargo has now lifted on reviews, with critics either loving or hating the environmental satire as it stands at 53 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of writing.

Some of the most passionate arguments, however, came from the negative side of the divide, with David Ehrlich of IndieWire writing: “ Digger is a mega-budget Dr. Strangelove riff so detached from human truth that its most believable character is a one-eyed animatronic cat named Maggie.”

William Bibianni of The Wrap concluded: “ Digger is what happens when you give the week’s worst Saturday Night Live sketch an inexplicably large budget and delusions of grandeur.”

Nick Schager of The Daily Beast dismissed the film as “a tedious satire, slamming capitalistic greed, anti-environmental profiteering, rampant corruption, and horrid narcissism with all the bluntness of the shovel its protagonist reveres.”

David Fear of Rolling Stone lamented: “Big swings can win you games, make balls sail out of parks, get folks standing and cheering at witnessing someone going for it with all they’ve got. They can also result in the deafening whoosh of a massive swing-and-a-miss.”

Reflecting the film’s divisive nature, many critics gave the film a high score, with BBC Online describing it as an “art-house extravaganza”, Time Out calling it “wildly surprising,” and Collider praising Cruise’s “brilliant, daring performance”.

Digger is in cinemas from October 2. Recently, Tom Cruise weighed in on the effect of AI on the future of filmmaking.

The post Tom Cruise’s ‘Digger’ is getting crushed by critics: “a massive swing-and-a-miss” appeared first on NME .

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