Alejandro González Iñárritu, the Oscar-winning Mexican director, has returned with what is arguably the year’s most disappointing cinematic effort. Despite its ambitious scope, the film emerges as an exasperatingly shallow and self-congratulatory piece of satire. While cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and production designer Dennis Gassner succeed in creating disturbing, dreamlike visuals that bulge from the screen, the core performances from a talented cast feel surprisingly hollow.
Tom Cruise anchors the film as “Digger” Rockwell, an aging, paunchy Texas oil tycoon sporting prostheses and a balding pate. Modeled in spirit after the bomb-riding army major from Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, Rockwell is obsessed with a battered shovel once used by his grandfather. His life is defined by reckless industrial ambition, which eventually leads to a catastrophic environmental crisis when his company’s unauthorized drilling in the Arctic causes a massive ice floe—larger than Manhattan—to break off and careen toward the Norwegian coast.
The catastrophe is brought to light by Ganesh, a terrified and polite chief scientist portrayed by Riz Ahmed, who had long warned of the company’s dangerous practices. As the disaster nears, the narrative shifts to the White House, where John Goodman’s cranky President Compson struggles to maintain control. Cruise’s character eventually hijacks the crisis meeting, berating military and political leaders for their hypocrisy. The vice-president is played by Michael Stuhlbarg, whose talent is largely underutilized in this bland role, while Sandra Hüller is left with almost nothing to do as Digger’s half-sister.
The film attempts a sharp turn with a structural twist that feels both unearned and anticlimactic, forcing the audience into a postmodern void. Cruise delivers a standout, albeit contemptuous, monologue before a stylized United Nations assembly, where he attacks the hypocrisy of leaders who despise oil while remaining addicted to consumer conveniences. He also dismisses the viability of nuclear and renewable energy sources. Notably, his claims remain entirely unchallenged within the script, framed perhaps as a brutal, realist take on modern bad faith that the audience is expected to admire despite itself.
Much like Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up, the film relies on the assumption that its focus on a critical global issue warrants an exemption from critical scrutiny. However, the result feels glib and overblown. By drawing parallels to the exploitative urges of figures like Donald Trump, the movie attempts to strike a relevant chord, yet it ultimately collapses under the weight of its own inverted-comma narrative, leaving the audience trapped in a story that refuses to be fully investigated or dramatized.
