Rare is the movie fan who comes by their love of Durational Cinema naturally, without convincing their palate, through exposure and practice, that it’s tasting something delicious. Otherwise known as Slow or Contemplative Cinema, the subgenre is defined by molasses pacing and the banishment of true plotting, running counter to all of the things that films usually hold dear. Those who claim to adore Jeanne Dielman or the works of Jim Jarmusch and Kelly Reichardt shouldn’t be doubted in their sincerity, but they surely didn’t arrive at their admiration by accident. It takes time and intention to end up savoring that which most folks find dull or impenetrable, a statement that’s just as true for wine connoisseurs, avant garde music fans, and performance art aficionados. Effort is the key, and for all the work that co-writer/director Alejandro González Iñárritu put into Digger, he’s gonna need some invested return on investment. It might not be Durational Cinema, but actually enjoying it takes some leg work.

It’s the very kind of sweat equity that Digger Rockwell (Tom Cruise) bloviates about to everyone in his orbit, though the level of effort he’s put into his Mansa Musa-esque oil empire remains unclear. Generations of familial success see him lounging around in the gaudiest estate imaginable, a temple of elongated staircases, sky scraping windows, and the mounted horns of innumerable animals, though by the time we meet the man, it’s his turn to become prey. After ignoring a slew of warning signs, his Greenland drilling station goes up in flames, sending an iceberg that’s reportedly the size of Maryland on a collision course for Norway. Fearing mass casualties and, much more importantly, public outcry, Digger convenes with the sitting President of the United States (John Goodman), a top environmental scientist (Riz Ahmed), and a swath of yes-men underlings to decide on his next move.

To discuss Digger in any meaningful way is to hopscotch through a minefield of spoilers, but reporting that the aforementioned gang’s emergency plan fails spectacularly shouldn’t be seen as a premature giveaway. They’re immediately too buffoonish to roll anything but snake eyes, a pompous coterie of fools that’s better suited for a shouting match than a global disaster. Each more washed-out and unsightly than the last, their make-up and costuming is culled straight from a Tim Burton flick, in keeping with the movie’s onslaught of ugly reference points. The fussy, ineffective boardroom maneuvering is pure Coen brothers, their manic hollering and wild gesticulations culling from Terry Gilliam just as openly, and the end-of-days shenanigans all have PHDs from the university of Dr. Strangelove. You could hardly do better in terms of inspirations, but the one thing all those creators and their projects had in common was an ability to tickle the funny bone. Digger may have its fair share of laugh lines, but virtually each and every one of them fall flat on their face.

Somehow, that’s is just things going according to plan. This is where treading closely to a big reveal becomes unavoidable, so if you’re looking to remain completely oblivious, it’s best to turn back now. For those still reading, there’s an element of artifice to what’s being depicted in the vast majority of Digger’s sequences, one that recontextualizes the hammy, overwrought performance style of everyone involved as a choice that extends beyond store bought satire. That cacophony of atonal yelling is supposed to be grating, the desaturated visuals are intentional in their unsightliness, and there’s a reason you can hear a pin drop whenever a joke is attempted. It’s honestly a good one, designed by screenwriters Alexander Dinelaris Jr., Nicolás Giacobone, Sabina Berman, and Iñárritu himself to take the air out of satire itself, and the construction is air tight. If it were a term paper requiring its scribes to provide a thesis statement and argue creatively and persuasively in its favor, the thing would score top marks. Only it’s not a thing, it’s a movie, and when rendered as an optical entertainment, sifting through all their galaxy-brained thinking turns into a chore.

At least the curtain pull lets Goodman, Ahmed, and fellow supporting players Michael Stuhlbarg, Sandra Hüller, and Jesse Plemons off the hook for what initially scanned as catastrophic actorly decisions, but swallowing that pill is easier said than done. These are five of the most dependable, charismatic, and mutlifaceted on-screen thespians working today, and forming an ensemble out of them just to strip away all the charm and agency is downright cruel to the paying customer. Ditto cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, the three-time Oscar winner behind Birdman, Gravity, Children of Men, and The Tree of Life, his sterling work running the gamut from pulse-pounding immersion to heart-swelling, impossible beauty. He might just be too good at his job, because when Digger asks him to make things pallid and distasteful, he’s more than up to completing the devil’s work. The eyes tire of watching it almost immediately, which, again, is the achievement of some sort of misbegotten goal. Say what you will about Don’t Look Up, the 2021 feature that mined similar gallows humor from the end of our environmental days and is still getting dinged for its heavy-handedness, but at least director Adam McKay’s film actually wanted to be liked. Digger actively aspires to be the least popular kid in class.

Except for Cruise, whose savior complex would never allow him to hang an audience out to dry, an occasionally cloying affectation that might as well be water in a desert here. His first non-Mission: Impossible or Top Gun: Maverick turn in almost a decade may be wasted on a turkey, but it’s sublime in its own right, toggling between mannered largess and surprising intimacy as only a star of his caliber could, and his show-stopping centerpiece scene is almost worth the price of admission. It’s just buried under so much festering rot, the kind that prompts an instinctive, unconscious revulsion before situating the mind in that same regrettable space. Satire may not be Iñárritu’s cup of tea, but a 129 minute treatise on its inability to spark meaningful change is as hollow and depressing as it sounds.

It also misunderstands or doesn’t particularly care about the only demographic who had any chance of justifying its gargantuan 180 million dollar budget, because the ‘drill, baby, drill’ crowd was never going to show out. Digger’s only hope for financial rescue comes from the left side of the aisle, and while there’s value in refusing to coddle a horde of liberal optimists, there’s none in telling them that the fight is over and lost. Contrarians will rise, singing praise of a flick that’s this brazen in its nihilism, going to bat for all of the talent and craft it took to weave this web of defeatist despair, but their endorsement will be sweaty and laborious. You know them; they’re the worst hang at every party, snarky and self-satisfied, and if they want to endeavor the strenuous path of Digger contrarianism, more power to them. Iñárritu’s film is looking like an all-time fiscal fiasco, which only shows that his blueprint is successful. Maybe, next time, that money should go to a filmmaker who doesn’t go through elaborate pains just to tell us that we’re all cooked, and then call it a day.