Alejandro González Iñárritu, the Oscar-winning director known for ambitious cinematic events, has returned with what is arguably the most disappointing film of the year. Despite the involvement of top-tier talent, the movie emerges as a laborious, shallow, and self-congratulatory satire. While cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and production designer Dennis Gassner succeed in crafting haunting, dreamlike visuals, the performances—despite being from highly regarded actors—feel largely ineffective. Yes, but the film’s value resides chiefly in some dreamlike and disturbing images, distorted and bulging from the screen, conjured by cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and production designer Dennis Gassner, there are moments to enjoy in Tom Cruise’s boisterous leading turn.
The story focuses on “Digger” Rockwell, an aging and paunchy Texan oil mogul. Played by Tom Cruise, the character is outfitted with prosthetics, a balding scalp, and a Southern twang, channeling the spirit of a Dr Strangelove-esque war hawk. Digger is obsessed with a shovel used by his grandfather, which he brandishes frequently to justify his relentless pursuit of “black gold.” His domestic life is equally eccentric, centering on his attachment to an incontinent cat. An ageing, paunchy Texan oil tycoon called “Digger” Rockwell is seen fretfully getting up in the morning, cooing over his horrible old incontinent cat, taking urgent messages from underlings about a certain situation developing in his drilling station in the frozen Arctic. Together with a good-ol’-boy twang and a Stetson borrowed from Slim Pickens’s bomb-riding army major in Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove, he is played by Tom Cruise with a wispy baldingness and various other prostheses. Digging for black gold as a penniless young man in the lone star state, his prized possession is the battered old shovel his granddaddy used a century before.
Tensions reach a breaking point when his chief scientist, Ganesh—portrayed by Riz Ahmed—warns that their company’s reckless drilling in the Arctic has triggered a catastrophe. A massive ice shelf, dwarfing Manhattan, has detached and is hurtling toward the Norwegian coast, threatening a disaster comparable to a nuclear strike. Digger remains unrepentant, even taking control of a White House crisis meeting led by an ailing President Compson, played by John Goodman. In this sequence, Digger lambasts the political leadership, including a blandly played vice-president by Michael Stuhlbarg, for enabling the very climate policies they now fear. Digger likes to brandish this to make a point. Querulous and terrified chief scientist Ganesh (Riz Ahmed) that the company’s irresponsible drilling practices, of which Ganesh has been warning Digger for quite some time, have caused a crisis: a vast ice floe, many times the size of Manhattan island, has broken away from the Arctic landmass and is now moving quickly, digger’s – and the world’s – troubles come to a head when he is informed by his cringingly polite.
The narrative attempts a sharp pivot with an unexpected plot twist, though the transition serves mainly to dampen the film’s momentum. A centerpiece of the movie is a monologue where Digger scolds a stylized assembly of UN officials, accusing them of hypocrisy for condemning the oil industry while remaining dependent on its products. He goes further to dismiss renewable and nuclear energy as unviable alternatives. Notably, Digger’s cynical worldview remains largely unchallenged by the screenplay; his perceived realism regarding the “bad faith” of others appears to be a point the film expects the audience to admire, despite the character’s obvious moral failings. Part of what we are perhaps supposed to admire, in spite of ourselves, about his realist sense of everyone else’s bad faith, yet Digger’s claim remains unchallenged. Its imminent landfall is going to be like a nuclear attack.
Ultimately, the film feels trapped in a postmodern dilemma, attempting to tackle the world’s most pressing issues while resorting to glib, overblown storytelling. By enclosing its core conflict within a “high-concept” twist that lacks sufficient dramatic investigation, the movie undermines its own impact. Much like Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up, the project seems to rely on a tacit agreement that viewers should suspend critical judgment because the film addresses important themes. However, in its attempt to mirror the greedy impulses of figures like Donald Trump, it finds itself stuck in a narrative hole of its own making.
