Tom Cruise has undergone a dramatic physical transformation to play a 64-year-old billionaire oil tycoon in his latest film, Digger, which premiered in London last week.
The Hollywood actor, who is best known for performing his own high-speed stunts in the Mission: Impossible and Top Gun franchises, is barely recognisable in the new darkly comic satire.
Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, the ruthlessly acquisitive boss of Rockwell Oil. The actor wears heavy prosthetics to subvert his usual leading-man image, appearing grey, jowly, balding and pot-bellied to look his age on screen.
Speaking at the world premiere, Cruise described the project as "next-level filmmaking".
The event took place at the Odeon Leicester Square and served as the Royal Film Performance, a charitable premiere traditionally attended by members of the British royal family. The Prince and Princess of Wales were in attendance with their entourage.
The security protocols for the royal guests meant the audience was held inside the cinema at the end of the screening until the couple had safely departed. The delay left some perplexed viewers wondering if they had been barricaded in as an unwitting part of the narrative.
Writing about the premiere, film critic Brian Viner noted that the audience was so overwhelmed by the bizarre story that being locked in the cinema felt like a brazen piece of performance art, rather than a prosaic royal security measure.
Environmental disaster
Digger is directed by the acclaimed Mexican filmmaker Alejandro G Inarritu. The director has a history of ambitious and unconventional storytelling, having won back-to-back Academy Awards for Best Director for Birdman in 2014 and The Revenant in 2015.
The film has been compared to Stanley Kubrick's 1964 masterpiece Dr Strangelove. While the classic Kubrick film satirised the threat of nuclear warfare during the Cold War, Inarritu's new film uses a similar tone to tackle the modern threat of environmental disaster.
At the beginning of the film, Rockwell faces a crisis at a drilling site in Greenland, where a methane leak puts his workforce at mortal risk. Following a massive explosion, a huge chunk of the polar ice shelf breaks off and heads towards Europe at an "alarming velocity" with potentially cataclysmic consequences.
Despite the unfolding global emergency, the billionaire is initially more concerned about his personal life. Rockwell lives in an enormous baronial home festooned with the spoils of his hunting trips, but his true love is his precious, elderly pet cat.
The cat, which shares the tycoon's bed, is dying of leukaemia, and the autocratic boss is distracted by his pet's failing health.
Satirical plot
As the situation in Greenland intensifies, the autocratic United States president arrives at Rockwell's mansion with his cabinet to discuss the crisis. They are briefed on the disaster by Rockwell's nervy head of environmental safety, played by British actor Riz Ahmed.
John Goodman plays President Compson, a bad-tempered vulgarian whose energy policy is simply "drill, baby, drill". The character is depicted as a populist leader eager to tap the natural resources in Greenland.
Inarritu uses the cabinet meetings for lacerating satire. The presidential discussions resound with racism and sexism, but bizarrely conclude with a clergyman leading the politicians in prayer.
The narrative includes a major twist around half an hour into the runtime, followed by subsequent twists within the story that confound the initial expectations of the audience.
Oscar whispers
The film culminates in a bravura speech delivered by Rockwell to a grey assembly of European politicians. The core message of the film suggests that, as relentless consumers, the public is complicit in its own downfall.
Viner described the film as a bold and often brilliant piece of work, though he cautioned that the complex conceit and artifice can feel self-indulgent and baffling on a first viewing.
The bold approach has already sparked whispers of potential Oscar nominations for Inarritu, Cruise and Goodman. Goodman is a veteran American actor known for his frequent collaborations with the Coen Brothers, and his performance as the president adds to a long career of acclaimed roles.
The film also features fabulous supporting performances from Sandra Huller, the German star of Anatomy of a Fall, and Jesse Plemons, known for his work in Breaking Bad and Killers of the Flower Moon.
Ahmed, who is an Oscar-winning actor and musician celebrated for his starring role in Sound of Metal, features alongside an animatronic cat used for the tycoon's beloved pet.
Digger arrives in cinemas on Friday.
