Tom Cruise in crisis: foreign press tears apart Digger, his new film, and calls Iñárritu: “the director of failure”

Tom Cruise and Alejandro González Iñárritu bet big on Digger, but so far the film has not received good reviews, especially from the U.S. press, which tore apart the Mexican filmmaker's work following a complicated opening weekend at the box office. Some U.S. media outlets described it as "pretentious" and "a failure."

Tom Cruise is going through one of the biggest stumbles of his career with 'Digger', according to American critics. The film, which sought to show the actor outside of his usual action movies and put him back in the conversation for major awards, met with a particularly harsh response from some American critics.

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The problem did not stay just with the reviews. Digger grossed about $8 million in the United States and Canada during its opening weekend, and another $12 million in 73 international markets, according to figures compiled by Variety.

This situation led various media outlets to speak openly about a box office failure for Tom Cruise, while the reviews have placed a good deal of the artistic responsibility on Iñárritu's proposal.

The Daily Beast, for example, described Digger as "desperate" and a "catastrophe," while referring to Iñárritu as "the director of failure" for the film starring Tom Cruise.

In other foreign media, the response was also negative, as the BBC said that "Tom Cruise took the biggest risk of his career" in this film that "you either love or you hate."

For his part, critic Carlos Boyero wrote in El País that "Iñárritu turns a story about the end of humanity into a hysterical, pretentious, and narratively disastrous spectacle."

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What is Digger, the new film starring Tom Cruise, about?

Digger is a dark comedy satire directed and co-written by Alejandro González Iñárritu, in which Tom Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, a powerful oil tycoon whose activities trigger an environmental catastrophe.

The film represents a major change for Cruise, who for the last few years has been mainly associated with action franchises like Mission Impossible and Top Gun.

In this instance, the actor appears as an aging and extravagant businessman, in a performance much further removed from his traditional action hero image. The film also features actors such as Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, and Sandra Hüller.

Is ‘Digger’ Tom Cruise's biggest failure?

Based on its initial numbers, it does represent one of the biggest commercial stumbles of his career.

The Washington Post reported that the film had Tom Cruise's worst opening in nearly two decades, with approximately $8 million in the United States and Canada and an additional $12 million in the international market during its first weekend. The figure is especially striking because Cruise is one of the actors with the greatest historical ability to attract audiences to theaters.