This review contains spoilers.Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Digger might be the most self-serious unserious film I’ve seen in recent memory. Ostentatious sets, unsubtle acting punctuated by facial tics, and a score (by Cosmo Sheldrake) that underlines nearly every emotion: the film rarely looks like the finest hour of its star-studded team. Then, about a third into the 129-minute film, Inarritu reveals his conceit: what we’ve been watching is a rehearsal of a play called Fossil Fools, supposed to premiere later in the day.Built around greedy fossil fuel baron Digger Rockwell (Tom Cruise), who [in the film’s world] triggered an apocalypse with his reckless extraction rigs in Greenland and Alaska, Inarritu’s film admits to be aiming for a deliberately underwhelming play. Its lead, Curtis Markson (Cruise, the actor playing Digger) says he feels “disconnected” with the play. However, Digger also commits the cardinal sin of supplementing the play with a film that has frustratingly little to add to modern discourse. As a result, the over-the-top play begins to look like an excuse for a shoddy film.Reminiscent of Inarritu’s Birdman (2014), which is also set in the backstage of a theatre crew in the days leading up to its premiere, Digger is a bit more ambitious in what it’s trying to achieve. Despite revealing the film is a theatre rehearsal (as a result pulling its audience out of the film), Digger trusts its audience to immerse itself in the tale again, when the next scene starts. Like a play, where audience members can see the artifice and choose to ignore it. It’s an idea that outruns its novelty, as the social commentary in Fossil Fools starts to feel gratingly obvious. A white trillionaire realising he’s set off an explosion in the Arctic circle, triggering a block of ice the size of Maryland towards Europe, is not nearly as bizarre compared to what appears in the news cycle. Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up did a better job of setting off an asteroid in Earth’s path. As the filthy, xenophobic, bible-hugging US President Compson – John Goodman brings little flavour or eccentricity to his part, compared to his real-life counterpart. Dr Nirav Ganesh (Riz Ahmed), playing Digger’s head of environmental safety, is engaging in the double-handers with Cruise, but it has the abrupt squeaks of a theatre performance – a mousy subordinate in one, an indignant civilian shocked at the tycoon’s callousness in another. A screengrab from the trailer of ‘Digger’.Inarritu might argue it’s the design of the performance, where it has to look like a theatre role, but it’s a tight-rope he’s chosen to walk, where Ahmed’s performance ultimately needs to work for the film (which is what Digger is). Curtis acknowledging the play’s shortcomings doesn’t make the experience any less egregious. The first time I really believed Cruise in the film, is when Curtis yells at the theatre director, when he gets an important phone call right before a scene. His wife is calling him to tell him about their daughter, who has boarded a plane to see him on his play’s opening night, but hasn’t landed yet. Bad weather has diverted some planes, forcing Curtis to hold his breath till he hears about his daughter’s safety. It’s a rare moment in the film, where the dystopia isn’t so front-and-centre, and I preferred it that way. I enjoyed Cruise more as the dissatisfied, shy, awkward Curtis, than as the rollicking, narcissistic cowboy honcho. The thesis of Inarritu’s film that narratives outlive facts, is an urgent, pressing one – but one that isn’t adequately explored. The producer of the play, Kenny (Jesse Plemons), a tech billionaire dabbling in security intelligence, is possibly a stand-in for the Silicon Valley moguls and their increased proximity with Washington DC and their own myth-making. Kenny, it’s revealed, was related to Digger Rockwell, which propelled him to option the rights of the play, and revive the absurd myth of arguably the worst man who ever lived.A screengrab from the trailer of ‘Digger’.Inarritu’s films have often been described as pretentious and awards-baiting, but never have I found any of his earlier works this unpleasant. Not even Bardo: False Chronicle of a handful of truths (2022), which I thought was extremely indulgent in parts. In Digger, I was gobsmacked at the crew’s insistence to put together all this sound fury to say nothing more alarming than what one might glean through an Instagram reel. Made on a reported $125 million budget, I think I might go so far as to call Inarritu’s film a blockbuster-sized waste of a carbon footprint.Despite his preceding off-screen reputation, Cruise is an extremely convincing actor when he’s being sincere. I hope the reception to this doesn’t discourage him from taking bold swings in the future. In what is his first non-action hero role since Rock of Ages (2012), Cruise’s performance can’t be faulted here. I just wish it was in service of a satire less satisfied with its intentions. *Digger is playing in theatres.