Virtuoso and funny, Digger misses his target (critic)

Tom Cruise lets loose in front of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s camera in a satire that goes in circles with quickly exhausting one-upmanship.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Alone in an empty gallery, Tom Cruise shoots while mimicking a gun with his fingers. For this new role, the actor has gained weight, wears white hair plastered to his head and speaks with an incomprehensible Texan accent. The ex-Ethan Hunt is well suited to play Digger Rockwell, an oil king whose drilling in the Great North has just triggered the apocalypse. A huge glacier is drifting towards Europe. He lives in his mansion, between his super profits and a dying cat. The rest ? Nothing to worry about. Imagine Doctor Strangelove reviewed by Yorgos Lanthimoswith short focal lengths that stretch the faces, a camera that doesn’t stay in place (it’s the Lubezki touch) and grotesqueness on every level. Under his prosthetics, Cruise lets loose like in the days of Les Grossman in Thunder in the Tropics. Amusing.

We are a little cautious before getting involved: this big joke would have been enough. It had its star, its monster (they are the same) and its approaching catastrophe. But here it is: we are in a film ofInarritu. And the filmmaker wants more. Always more…