Digger Rockwell (Thomas Cruise Mapother IV, cousin to the superior William) is a loud, brash, obnoxious, ignorant, brutish and rude oil magnate who is told, repeatedly, that his rig is going to cause a natural disaster. Lumbering in to action, alongside his scientist adviser Ganesh (Riz Ahmed) and boorish President Compson of the United States (John Goodman) he attempts to save the world. Sandra Huller is also here.
(Credit: IMDB)
For the first 30 minutes, it is a repellently unamusing comedy in the vein of sub-par Ray Cooney: opening and closing of doors, an interminable gag with a shovel which not even actors as talented as Riz Ahmed and Sandra Huller (who is given less than nothing to do, a love interest part would be more for her) can make amusing, hampered with a plodding and pedestrian direction which believes grotesquerie and volume are equivalent to humour; gross and big and bombastically empty without anything of note or worth.
Then after an interminable, brutal 30 minutes of local theatre, there is a "big reveal" which director of the overrated horseshit "The Revenant" Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu clearly believes is shocking and daring and justification for the misery which has preceded it. Instead, he keeps the same dour, miserable, shit performances from otherwise good actors and Tom Cruise, elevates nothing, and expects us to revel in the genius of sub-"Birdman" revelations to prop up his limp-dick satire. Cruise has a subplot about a daughter so half-baked as to injest a moderate case of food poisoning amongst the viewer, which may explain the vulgarity shown by the cast and why everybody else seemed to think it was funny, and it's expected to be our emotional anchor and coil during the film's full-throated cock-sucking of Digger in the plot (an attempt at discussing the satirisation and hagiography of monsters rightfully condemmned by history), which is then undercut thrice: first by being shit, second by having the strength of an anemic gnat with leukemia boxing Randy Couture (and in a world where the festering corpses of the worst excesses of humanity drape themselves in the trappings of a pervert's church, recite the scripture of degeneracy and are enthralled by the stupidest yet somehow richest motherfuckers on the planet, your satire needs to be better than having John Goodman screaming about cancer of the asshole three times and plotting to nuke China), and then once more by sucking off Tom Cruise anyway where the scene from "Team America" when Gary idolises Alec Baldwin happens, only this time it's played in live action by Jesse Plemons (who, to be fair, could pull off a convincing Gary from "Team America"), rendering the whole charade they had draped across their shit writing and slapshod performances moot. I know that these people can act: Michael Stuhlbarg ran circles around every single character in "Boardwalk Empire" and made it look effortless, but here is relegated to playing a snivelling, drooling sycophantic weakling of a Vice President, for whom even the movie cannot be bothered to add any depth: it stops the plot halfway through to have Cruise (in this film's bible the greatest actor, genius and visionary of all time, but in practice channelling a character who works in "Tropic Thunder" for 20 minutes but cannot carry an entire film, he's no Benoit Blanc) decry that it's overdone and cliche.
IF.
YOU.
KNOW.
IT.
IS.
BAD.
WHY.
ARE.
YOU.
DOING.
IT?
Characters stop proceedings again halfway through to discuss their themes, to rant about what they are trying to say, and the already charmless staging becomes tedious. It threatens to get good when Riz Ahmed (he's an Indian and he's called Ganesh, truly we are dealing with the Oscar Wilde of cinema here, Gonzalez Inarritu is playing 8-D chess with us, you just don't understand it) vents at our titular prick on a plane, who proceeds to tell him a tale about where some tuna came from, lets him enjoy it, and cackles that he had no clue where it came from and the story is what matters. Man, they almost said something there, good job!
That's tossed aside when they subsequently have multiple characters declare "It's not the truth which matters, but the story you tell."
It's a movie which believes itself to be saying something profound, about the nature of art and how we use it to varnish history, how we should seek humanity in villainy but also remember the consequences of actions and the ever-present need for truth.
But the truth is it says nothing, it bloviates and belches and bellows (more jokes end with flatulence, bodily functions and repetitions of "ass cancer" than a Dane Cook routine) and presents us this "fearless" Cruise performance, when it in fact has no humanity. Much like the trees in the "twist" shot, these are not people, they are artificial toys and props for an empty director to proclaim are important. Benoit Blanc was a fun change of pace, a script and performance for an actor to delve one's teeth into: "Digger" is Gonzalez Inarritu leaping up and down on a sofa proclaiming he is in love with "Dr Strangelove" as if he'd just discovered it and wondered why nobody else has tried to redo that piece of shit because holy shit guys it's so fucking easy!
He can do "Big Short!" He's got Oscars!
John Goodman almost works, having a background in comedy, but is given no humanity outside of witnessing him vape, much like the aforementioned Stuhlbarg. They want us to see duality, but have no contrast or depth to give these people. Burn Gorman got a snicker out of me I guess (you go man! You and your weird fucking career) and between them Goodman and Robert John Burke got the sole laugh out of me early on from the well-trodden gag of "bomb hungry general" (side note: I like Robert John Burke). By the time of the Kuleshov effect rising curtain and cheering, I was about ready to beat this smug, self-satisfied, pretentious crime against my face-eyes with a copy of "Mortal Kombat 2" for it had more depth than this fucking puddle of piss.
It's a comedy which isn't funny, a "devoted" (I will not say good) performance from Tom Cruise which never rises to anything resembling a character, it's a satire which doesn't land, and it's a movie which is destined for obscurity and curiosity status and made me go a lot easier on Winding Refn's last effort: at least he made movies for himself and his audience. Gonzalez Inarritu has made an ode to an idea he had, and I have to respect that.
It's still a festering piece of shit which was about as pleasant and deep as the ass cancer which ravaged the bowels of one of America's best actors in this film, as they were so quick to remind us.
Fuck this.
