This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
Break a leg!
Plot Overview
Oil mogul “Digger”
Rockwell (Tom Cruise) gives a baldfaced mythical account
of his beginnings when purportedly his grandfather
with only a spade in hand—now hanging on Bwana Digger's trophy
wall—dug into the Texas soil till he struck oil. No
scientific investigation or exploratory digs, just
unmitigated bs. It sets the tone for
this political satire presented as a play in the making. The only
softball game of Digger's his grandfather ever attended
happened to be the one in which he'd hit a homer. His
granddaddy disparaged it saying anybody could do that; it
took hustle, though, to hit a triple. Allegorically, this
could well represent black gold able to provide all our
energy needs, but we have to hustle to make secondary sources of
so-called renewable energy stretch to cover a mere fraction of them.
Digger
has a thirty-year-old cat named Maggie who requires extensive
treatment from a feline specialist. When Maggie craps on him,
he transfers her care to his family physician who just hasn't got
the training to do this job. It's similar to the complexities of
climate study requiring multiple fields beyond the scope of the
ordinary scientist who misdiagnoses global warming as human caused.
That's how 19th century science would have it. Back then they
thought hot houses worked by minimizing infrared radiation through
the glass siding. Science writer Alan Siddons in a chapter on
“A Long List of Misconceptions,” writes of that
theory, “It is 19th century poppycock” (62.)
“In reality, greenhouses merely suppress convective
heating loss, preventing the heated air from dissipating. It is air
that's trapped, not radiation; glass's response to infrared
(IR) has nothing to do with it”
(63.) (The futuristic movie “The
Martian” shows Earth scientists having got wise to
greenhouses staying warm from blocking convection, not
radiation.) That 19th century science is the root of our manmade,
greenhouse gas, global warming, cockamamie theory.
Acknowledge some variation in the earth's orbit, which NASA says is cyclical, some cosmic
flare-ups that also affect other planets in our solar system, and
email-gate, and you've got a theory readily debunked.
In his home study
furnished with a polar bear rug, Digger receives news of a pending
environmental disaster. A drilling platform of his in
Greenland has dug too deep, releasing methane gas that
exploded splitting off a huge iceberg female-named Judy
heading for Europe. A cabinet meeting is called of all old white
men. They do nothing. It gets worse when the thing calves producing
Kimberly, and really worse when they bomb her (“Go full
Moab”) into baby bergs. It's a slippery slope to global
disaster. A UN meeting is
convened, predominately of white fossils but admitting a few
females, and one token black. Called upon to defend himself,
Digger comes out with, “It's the price of doing
business” and puts it back on them, “You want
energy,” don't you? The debate devolves into a melee
w/physical violence, overlooked by a sculpture of Lady Justice
blindfolded and calmly holding even scales. Digger is the
nigger of bigger business, a pariah who gets exiled to a
platform in the North Sea. Unresolved is the connection
between environmental care and business profits, as say intimated
in a David Baldacci thriller:
“I understand he was a lobsterman.”
“One of the best,” said the … man. “And I should know. I'm one, too. Damn hard work for not much money. And the lobsters? They're going AWOL. Say it's climate change, warming water, and they're heading north. All I know is my money got cut in half. Had to get a second job. Most days I come off the boat all tired as hell and go right to work on another gig.” (65)
Ideology
(Prov.
30:15-16) “The horseleach hath two daughters,
crying, Give, give. There are three things that are never
satisfied, yea, four things say not, It is enough: The grave; and
the barren womb; the earth that is not filled with water; and the
fire that saith not, It is enough.” There are two kinds of
definitively dependent folk (“crying, Give, give”): the
very young—out from the womb, and they keep coming—and
the very old—heading for the grave, and they keep leaving. In
“Digger” this demand is demonstrated by an aging
president freezing up while bloviating from the deck of a plane
until his fellow passenger slaps him on the back to jolt him out of
his senior moment. And secondly by Digger's wife after years of care for
their daughter Hope, having the maternal instinct to vouch for her safety
as incommunicado she's fleeing a Caribbean storm.
When the ancient worldwide flood
drained away, the earth was able to establish a productive ecology.
As authoress Donna Howell with Dr. Thomas Horn puts it (from Job 38:8, Job 38:26-27):
Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb? [Shutting the “doors” to the sea denotes God's majestic ability to limit Earth's waters so the planet will not fall prey to perpetual flooding. “When it brake forth” is considered by many to refer to a time Earth was flooded, and of course, most assume this to be Noah's Flood. To Gap theorists, this entire speech is a reference to an epoch more ancient than Noah; it glances back to the “deep” of Genesis 1:2.] To cause it to rain on the earth, where no man is; on the wilderness, wherein there is no man; To satisfy the desolate and waste ground; and to cause the bud of the tender herb to spring forth? (113)
It's as in a line from
Wassermann: “fruitful, as it has always been since time
immemorial; the corn ripens, the potatoes thrive, the poppy blooms
and the root-crops grow rich and succulent” (7). The
satire here is whether our planet has actually succumbed to the
predicted inconvenient truth of agricultural land washed away or
whether it is still viable.
“The fire that saith not, It is enough” refers to human (or animal) metabolism that runs all of one's life and must be fed. It's here illustrated by a cat that must be hand-fed tuna and by Rockwell's vegan head of environmental safety, Nirav Ganesh (Riz Ahmed) who must be coaxed into eating fish off his plate. Within the theme of this movie, it takes mucho energy—from somewhere—to sow, harvest, and process human food.
Production Values
“” was directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu. It was written by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Alexander Dinelaris and Nicolás Giacobone. It stars Tom Cruise, Riz Ahmed and John Goodman. Cruise did a credible job of portraying a spry, outdoorsy fossil; I wouldn't have guessed he had it in him. Bravo! Goodman portrayed a president who didn't look presidential enough to get my vote, but that's nothing new. Ahmed was slipped into a movie that wasn't minority friendly. His was the only voice of reason. What is this world coming to?
MPA rated it R for pervasive language. The movie is layered. There's a live audience we see at the end for opening night of “Fossil Fools.” There's the arranging of stage props and testing of lighting. There's the rehearsal itself that is pretty serious as rehearsals go. Our local theater has installed these reclining seats. I got myself comfortable and dozed off during a boring part but was JOLTED awake by a loud noise on the big screen. I paid attention from then on.
Even the women got in on the rumble, climbing over the seats, it was really funny, but I think the Negro went back to the hood. It would not have been PC to include him in the riot. Runtime is 2 hours 9 minutes.
Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation
Time was taken out for prayers as the
situation demanded. Some even believed they'd be answered. The sole
Bible quote was the familiar, “Thou shalt not kill,” but the
good book did get thrown across the room at one point. This is a
class A satire presented as a cult classic. Bring your umbrella.
Movie Ratings
Action factor: Well done action flick. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Special effects: Deliberately shows some of the strings. Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day. Suspense: Keeps you on the edge of your seat. Overall movie rating: Four stars out of five.
Works Cited
Scripture is taken from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Memory, Software.
Baldacci, David. The Edge. Copyright © 202[3] by Columbus Rose, Ltd. New York: Grand Central Publishing, Paperback edition, 2024. Print.
Ball, Timothy, & Alan Siddons, Claes Johnson et al. Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory. Mount Vernon: Stairway Press, 2011. Print.
Howell, Donna and Dr. Thomas Horn. Before Genesis. © 2023 Defender Publishing. Crane, MO: Defender Pub., 2023. Print.
Wassermann, Jacob. The Dark Pilgrimage. Originally published in Germany under the title Die Juden Von Zirndorf (The Jews of Zirndorf). New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1933. Print.
bibles.n7nz.org