Grist has published a defense of 'Digger,' Alejandro Iñárritu's climate allegory, pushing back against the magazine's earlier negative review. The critic acknowledges the film is grating, noisy, and unpleasant, but argues that sensory assault is the point. The movie uses cacophony to mirror contemporary life and the constant roar of planetary crisis.
Set around an Arctic oil operation, 'Digger' stars Tom Cruise as tycoon Digger Rockwell, who dismisses scientists' warnings about a methane-leaking crack in the ice. When an explosion sends a massive ice shelf toward Europe, Rockwell and a complicit U.S. president scramble. The critic reads these cartoonish men as avatars for real fossil-fuel interests and governments that delayed climate action.
The film then pulls back to reveal a play-within-a-movie: Cruise is an actor struggling with his role, and the production's director argues art should comfort the dispossessed. That twist turns 'Digger' into a meditation on who gets to tell the climate story and whether it should be farce or tragedy. The critic concedes the movie is imperfect but says its intellectual ambition kept him engaged.