One man\u2019s irresponsible drilling causes a global crisis in I\u00f1\u00e1rritu\u2019s exasperatingly laborious, self-congratulatory film<\/p>\n
A new movie from the Oscar-winning Mexican director Alejandro Gonz\u00e1lez I\u00f1\u00e1rritu is always an event. So it\u2019s disconcerting to discover that the event in question is the most disappointing film of the year: an exasperatingly shallow, laborious, self-congratulatory satire with a trick up its sleeve, featuring very good actors giving not very good performances. There are moments to enjoy in Tom Cruise\u2019s boisterous leading turn, yes, but the film\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
An ageing, paunchy Texan oil tycoon called \u201cDigger\u201d 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. He is played by Tom Cruise with a wispy baldingness and various other prostheses, together with a good-ol\u2019-boy twang and a Stetson borrowed from Slim Pickens\u2019s bomb-riding army major in Kubrick\u2019s Dr Strangelove. His prized possession is the battered old shovel his granddaddy used a century before, digging for black gold as a penniless young man in the lone star state. Digger likes to brandish this to make a point.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/ce939ad10645ce3d14e291138e02f52e6e36650d\/250_0_2500_2001\/master\/2500.jpg?width=140&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=461ee56ec21d178eabc1d40fc1e12d83\" "\\"Digger")
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