Movie: Dig

This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.

Trying to Survive

Plot Overview

The Brennans have tracked their teenaged daughter's phone to a watering hole in the New Mexican desert. The wife tells her man Scott (Thomas Jane) not to do any­thing crazy as he retrieves a wrecking hammer from the tool chest in their pickup and enters the bar. He emerges with his daughter Jane (Harlow Jane) kicking and screaming held in a fire­man's carry. As they're driving home an “asshole” cuts them off whom Scott confronts when stopped for gas. After being shoved the man calmly pulls a gun on this “tough guy,” but Scott is sh!t on wheels pinning his gun arm so he can't bring the weapon to bear. As luck would have it it goes off.

A year later Scott tries to persuade his yet traumatized daughter to accompany him on a fishing trip like the ones his own dad used to take him on. Stopping by his salvage yard, how­ever, he picks up a rush demolition order with a payout he can't refuse. He brings Jane along telling her, “A little hard work will do you some good, take your mind off things.” Jane in fact is adept both with hand tools and power tools.

It turns out to be a setup, an excuse to get excavation tools out to the site where his client Vic (Emile Hirsch) and Vic's girl­friend Lola (Liana Liberato) get the drop on them and prepare to shoot them forth­with until Scott persuades them to first make use of their expertise to uncover what­ever bodies lay buried out there and then shoot them. Lola wants to molest Jane before she kills her, but Vic won't allow it on account of Jane (17) being underage. It is evident they're a couple of crazies.

Ideology

When Scott entered that bar, the first full shot was of a pool table, the cue stick lining up a shot, then sinking such & such a ball in the corner pocket. It's a visual representation of cause and effect, what. Scott spots his daughter necking with some guy (Nick Check) and takes it as an insult they're kissing right in front of him; in some cultures, he says, a man would get pulverized for doing that. Let's do some cross-culture comparisons:

There's the well known story of the giant Goliath defying the living God, and David the shepherd boy slaying him with a sling, then cutting off his head. He was preserving God's honor.

There is the Bible story of when some kids mocked a man of God for not having hair on his head and they got mauled by beasts. (2Kings 2:23-24) “And … as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.”

Depicted below is a scene rendered in a Civil War vintage woodcut, made after a drawing by Julius Schnorr von Carols­feld (German painter, 1794–1872) from his archive, published in 1877.

The alternate image text by licensor iStock.com/Getty Images explains what happened here to Noah and his fermented grapes: “When he drank some of the wine, he got drunk and uncovered him­self inside his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father's nakedness and told his two brothers who were outside. Shem and Japheth took a garment and placed it on their shoulders. Then they walked in back­wards and covered up their father's nakedness. Their faces were turned the other way so they did not see their father's nakedness (Genesis 9:21-23).”

The Bible's account has that, (Gen. 9:24-27) “Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son [Ham] had done unto him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.” When Noah woke up, he blessed as a pair the lines of his two respectful sons and cursed Ham's line­—pairing Ham with his youngest son Canaan as was Noah's wont to go by twos—giving them servitude to his other two sons'. (Jasher 73:35) “For the Lord our God gave Ham the son of Noah, and his children and all his seed, as slaves to the children of Shem and to the children of Japheth, and unto their seed after them for slaves, forever.”

More germane to modern times is perhaps the lineage of Cush, Ham's oldest son (Gen. 10:6,) Cush meaning black in Hebrew, having settled in Africa, some of his to become in later years African-American slaves. Researcher Bodie Hodge confirms that, “As a general trend, Ham is the father of many peoples in Africa” (122). Dr. Ide adds, “Ham sired four sons: Cush (translates as ‘black’) … and Canaan the youngest” (62). The effects of that curse linger on.

Jane disobeying her curfew and mocking her dad had put herself in jeopardy of, (Prov. 30:17) “The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it.” That is not beyond the scope of cause and effect in our culture. Novelist Ted Bell writes of a chief inspector who “had been beaten to within an inch of his life and nearly pecked to death by countless killer ravens. All the while locked inside the cage of a Victorian aviary” (357.) In “Dig” a car swoops past them on the highway driven by a man whose pistol report will deafen hapless Jane (hearing 10% left ear, 3% right.) It's not losing an eye but it's in the same ballpark.

There's a parity of eye loss and servitude given in (Exodus 21:26) “And if a man smite the eye of his servant, or the eye of his maid, that it perish; he shall let him go free for his eye's sake.” The remainder of Jane's cosmic punishment seems to have been taken out in forced labor, digging the required ditch. But it also gave her a chance to be reconciled to her dad.

Production Values

“” (2022) was directed by K. Asher Levin. It was written by Banipal Ablakhad and Benhur Ablakhad. It stars Thomas Jane, Liana Liberato, Harlow Jane and Emile Hirsch. Liberato did a killer job as a femme fatale. Hirsch was a likeable villain. The lack­luster script gave the rest of the cast short shrift.

MPAA rated it R for pervasive language, violence, some sexual content and brief drug use. The settings were stark. It's a hard-bitten drama. Bullets aren't wasted as the bad guys have had plenty of practice hitting what they shoot at. Runtime is 1½ hours.

Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation

This is a wry drama with a thriller backdrop. More is at stake than mere survival, itself in serious jeopardy. We want the family unit, what remains of it, to prevail.

Movie Ratings

Action factor: Edge of your seat action. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Special effects: Well, at least you can't see the strings. Video Occasion: Better than watching TV. Suspense: Keeps you on the edge of your seat. Overall movie rating: Three stars out of five.

Works Cited

Scripture quoted from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769, 1873. Print. Software.

The Book of Jasher. Translated from the Hebrew into English (1840). Photo litho­graphic reprint of exact edition published by J.H. Parry & Co., Salt Lake City: 1887. Muskogee, OK: Artisan Pub., 1988. Print, Web.

Bell, Ted. Patriot. Copyright © 2015 by Theodore A. Bell. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. Print.

Hodge, Bodie. Tower of Babel: The Cultural History of Our Ancestors. Green Forest, AR: New Leaf Pub., 2013. Print.

Ide, Arthur Frederick. Noah & the Ark: The Influence of Sex, Homo­phobia and Hetero­sexism in the Flood Story and its Writing. Las Colinas: Monument Press, 1992. Print.