‘The Best Film I Have Ever Seen’

Digger might be a box office flop that split critics, but it has an unlikely fan in Neil Young, who proclaimed the Tom Cruise-starring movie as “the best film I have ever seen.”

Young shared his opinion of Digger last week in the Letters/Artists/Bandstand section of his Neil Young Archives Times-Contrarian newspaper. While the film has risen to 53 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, Young criticized the critics for missing the point of the Alejandro González Iñárrit film.

“None of the reviews I have read describe this film adequately, in my opinion. They seem to miss the overall effect and most of them are negative,” Young wrote. “This film lives in a world of art. It is its own best review. Don’t read any other reviews and forget this one before you see Digger.”

The rocker continued, “I would describe it as a film of our times. Tom Cruise is the actor playing the main character. I do not view this film as a commercial venture. Rather it is an artful film of our times. The things that are said in Digger are a direct reflection of today’s political and social world. The film is so full of artful expression and radical change-ups, that it may be too much to take in for those expecting a commercial film like we are used to today.”

Two weeks after its theatrical release, Digger has grossed roughly $38 million worldwide; Variety reported that the film would need to gross $350 million just to break even; as Young notes, Digger was the last film released by Warner Bros. before it was merged with Paramount. “As such, it is a great example of our times,” Young wrote.

With the film trending toward becoming one of the biggest box office disasters in recent film history, some in Hollywood — including Jane Fonda, Guillermo Del Toro, and Cruise’s Days of Thunder 2 co-star Anne Hathaway — have thrown their support behind the film, but Young is perhaps Digger’s biggest champion.

“It is today’s world of politics and commercial overload. A must see for those frustrated by the lack of genuine engagement present in much, if not all, of today’s offerings,” Young continued. “Digger is not to be missed.”