Movie Review: Digger

Posted on October 4, 2026 by jjcwn • Posted in Drama • Tagged Digger, John Goodman, Riz Ahmed, Tom Cruise • Leave a comment

Tom Cruise has been at the top of the movie industry for over 40 years, starting with “Risky Business” (1983) and “Top Gun” (1986), followed by the Mission: Impossible franchise that started in 1996 and now includes eight movies, making Tom Cruise by far the greatest movie stuntman of all time.

Cruise has been nominated for three Oscars, including “Born on the Fourth of July” (1988), “Jerry Maguire” (1996), and “Magnolia” (1999). For reasons unknown, Tom Cruise was not even nominated for his outstanding performance as a Navy Lawyer in “A Few Good Men” (1992). In my opinion, Cruise deserved at least 2 Oscars for these performances, but now, at age 64, he has never won an Oscar.

The buzz about the new movie “Digger” was that it would, once and for all, showcase Cruise’s acting ability and finally win him that elusive Oscar. The truth about the movie Digger is that it does show three outstanding acting performances by John Goodman, Riz Ahmed, and Tom Cruise, but the movie itself is such a nightmare of insane ideas, creepy scenes, and a completely illogical story that it is likely that none of these actors will be nominated for anything. It is close to impossible to win an Academy Award for a movie that has been panned by critics — Rotten Tomatoes is a very low 51%.

Digger was written by three screenwriters; another reason for the disconnected, insane story is that it might suggest that none of these writers actually collaborated while writing this disaster of a movie. It is hard to understand, given that the goal was to give Tom Cruise a great chance of winning an Oscar, that this screenplay was chosen, considering how crazy and insane the whole idea behind this story is.

Tom Cruise is Rockwell, the CEO of an oil company with rigs working in Greenland. Unfortunately, there are leaks that have been known about for some time and ignored, which cause a huge iceberg to break off and head towards Europe. At this point in the story, everything was normal and looked to be a good message story about Global Warming; then, about 25% in, the film took a giant leap into a crazy direction that seemed entirely about being different and had nothing to do with creating an interesting, coherent movie. The critics are as harsh as I have ever seen: Odie Henderson — The Boston Globe — ZERO STARS: “this egocentric piece of s***.” It is worth noting that Henderson isn’t merely saying the movie is bad—he put it in the extremely rare zero-star category.

Considering some scenes of great acting with Cruise, Goodman, and Ahmed, the mistake of turning this good story into a crazy, off-the-wall idea is somewhat tragic, when you remember that the entire point was to give Tom Cruise his shot at winning an Academy Award, and three great acting performances will go largely ignored. The people in charge of this movie all got the acting parts right, but forgot to write a real movie with a message that made sense.

I agree with the 51% rating for Digger on Rotten Tomatoes and do not recommend this movie, mainly because the “let’s be different” ideas are stupid, and it is so hard to sit through. As for the acting, some scenes might be a good idea for an acting class somewhere in Hollywood; for the rest of us, run away fast from this two-hour, insane, and incoherent mess.

Movie Review: Mission Impossible – The Final Reckoning

Posted on May 23, 2025 by jjcwn • Posted in Action Movie, Relationships, Romance • Tagged Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning, Tom Cruise, Vin Rhames • Leave a comment

The good news is that, to ultimately save the life of Tom Cruise and any number of stuntmen who create the most dangerous movie stunts in the history of film, this eighth installment., “Mission Impossible – The Final Reckoning” will most likely be the very last Mission Impossible movie. The problem with insane stunts like these is that for each new film, the producers always try to top themselves, and one day, during one mundane take of an action sequence, someone is going to be killed.

This new movie now has the most dangerous stunt scenes ever filmed, including the climax with two biplanes and Tom Cruise wingwalking, and climbing around both airplanes with a high probability of instant death. Some videos about these stunts explain the years of planning and risk involved (included in this blog) as Tom Cruise has once again topped himself, but has put his life in the most extreme danger in this movie.

As far as the rest of this 2-hour and 49-minute action film, there are times when the story is rather slow with a plotline that is overly crazy and complex, about a worldwide AI virus and the series of tasks required to find the source code and then trap the virus to save the world. There are also very dangerous scenes on a submarine where Tom Cruise spends a long period underwater looking for this container that, along with another device, is needed to trap the AI virus that is putting the world on the brink of nuclear war. This part of the action is the most far-fetched, with Tom Cruise at one point without a diving suit very deep in freezing cold water, something that would definitely kill any human being.

The rest of the cast includes the two regulars in this long-running movie franchise, including Simon Pegg as Benji Dunn and Ving Rhames as Luther Stickell, with Hayley Atwell as Grace, and did not include Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa Faust who has been Ethan Hunt’s long-term love interest and was in the last Mission Impossible movie released in 2023. This is because she was killed off in the last movie, something I did not like about the previous Mission: Impossible film. I also thought the ending of this film was too similar to the ending of Mission: Impossible Fallout, released in 2018, and the film was unnecessarily long.

The Rotten Tomatoes reviews for this film are an anemic 80%, mainly due to the overly complex and convoluted plot, with my rating 100% for the incredible action scenes and a solid 85% for this movie.

Movie Review: Top Gun Maverick

Posted on May 27, 2022 by jjcwn • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged Goose, Ice Man, Tom Cruise, Top Gun Maverick, Val Kilmer • Leave a comment

In recent years, with sequels that are many years after the original, the trend has been to rely on the huge name recognition and popularity of the original movie and forego the most important things: the story and the screenplay. Not this time. “Top Gun Maverick” has a great story and screenplay and is a very well made movie, worthy of the original Top Gun released in 1986. This film started production in 2018 – 2019 and was ready for release in 2020 and due to Covid the delay has been over 2 years. Top Gun Maverick may have set the record for not only the longest delays, but the longest period of time – 36 years – from the original to the sequel.

The main story is very well done, with Maverick, played by Tom Cruise being called back to the Top Gun training school to teach the best Navy Pilots to accomplish an almost impossible and dangerous task of blowing up a nuclear facility deep within the mountains of some unnamed foreign country. The flying required of diving down close to the ground, dropping a bomb and then diving up causing 10G forces required extremely impressive special effects, both during the training scenes and the very well done climax. Once again, Tom Cruise and many of his young co-stars did some of their own stunts, risking their lives to make a movie. One can easily argue that Tom Cruise should have won 2 Academy Awards for “A Few Good Men”, 1992, and “Born on the Fourth of July” 1990. But there is no doubt that Tom Cruise is by far the best stunt man in the history of movies. He has already risked his life many times in previous Mission Impossible productions, with two more in the Pipeline “Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning, Part 1 and 2”, set to be released in 2023 and 2024. Any fan of Tom Cruise cannot help worrying that maybe one day his risk taking with all of these films may one day be too much. Hopefully that day will never happen. Risk taking with dangerous stunts should be measured with the obvious realization that “Its only a movie”. No movie will ever be worth anyone’s life.

The actor Val Kilmer, who reprises his role as Iceman in the original Top Gun movie, makes a depressing appearance in this movie. In recent years, Val Kilmer has unfortunately almost died of throat cancer, and after two tracheotomies, he can no longer eat and now needs a feeding tube. The one scene Kilmer had with Tom Cruise in this movie involved Kilmer typing on a computer and later barely able to speak. In this sequel, Ice Man and Maverick are friends; one of the best parts of this sequel. Actor Miles Teller plays the son of Maverick’s close friend Goose, who died in the first movie and I thought that the conflicts they had in this story were very real and believable. The remaining cast of young Navy Pilots were also outstanding in their roles as was John Ham who played the Admiral in charge of the entire mission.

Actress Jennifer Connelly, plays Tom Cruise’s girlfriend, with no mention of Kelly McGillis, Maverick’s girlfriend in the original movie – a fact that I considered a harsh reality of the business of movie making.

The Rotten Tomatoes for Top Gun Maverick are an extremely high 97% and I agree with this rating and highly recommend this film.