I am here to tell you that Tom Cruise’s latest film is really good. This may be contrary to what you have heard given that those who hate it have not only given both barrels to The Revenant director Alejandro G Iñárritu’s satire, but have then hurled the sawn-off shotgun at Cruise himself.
Many see his performance as laughably inept. And OK, before this film’s jaw-dropping twist it might have been possible to dismiss both Cruise and the tone of the film as being fatally similar. Digger cherry-picks many ideas from Kubrick’s classic including the meat-headed masculinity of the US government which the current administration has saved from being an outdated cliché.
Certainly Cruise’s performance as Rockwell, the Texan owner and CEO of an oil corporation, is from his Stetson to his cowboy boots an archetype. We first encounter the tycoon in his absurdly opulent mansion. The walls are lined with dead animal trophies yet Rockwell obsessively cares for his very obviously dying, cancer-riddled cat, an animatronic beast that is the first clue all is not what it seems.
Meanwhile when Rockwell turns away from the camera to reveal skin and buttocks as droopy as wet linen, a statement is undoubtedly made that Cruise is here embracing age as much as his Ethan Hunt in Mission Impossible defied it.
The film’s pedigree for loose canon humour is bolstered by the presence of John Goodman as a decrepit US president suffering from cancer of the arse. Sandra Hüller as Rockwell’s sister Emma has the best line directed at her defiant brother. “You flooded half a continent. What are you going to do, double down?”. Also outstanding is Riz Ahmed as a jittery, brave expert on environmental catastrophe who drums up the courage to speak truth to power. It is a performance that makes up for Ahmed’s one-note Hamlet and is his best since his Oscar-nominated deaf drummer in Sound of Metal.
But to the twist. The spoiler alert among you may have noticed the above reference to a continent being flooded. But that bit of plot – established early on when Rockwell’s exploding Arctic rig sends a slice of ice the size of Manhattan to northern Europe – is not the shocker here. No, the twist is infinitely more shocking and much more interesting than the usual disaster movie catastrophe.
This twist is waltzer fairground-sized change of direction that is so dizzying you would fall over were you not safely installed in your cinema seat. It also allows a much more nuanced side to Cruise’s performance to emerge. More cannot be revealed without spoiling the story hatched by Iñárritu and his co-writers who include fellow Mexican Sabina Berman, one of a few hugely influential Mexican-Jewish artists Iñárritu has regularly turned to in his career.
Usually you shouldn’t believe the hype. This time don’t believe the criticism.
To get more from Life, click here to sign up for our free Life newsletter.