New Delhi, Oct. 4 -- In the run-up to Digger's release, a stray theory caught on that Alejandro G. Iñarritu's film might be a stealth musical. It was a sizeable enough rumour that the studio actually issued a disclaimer that it wasn't. I was reminded of this at the end of an elaborate sequence, the centrepiece of the film in many ways, in which oil tycoon Digger Rockwell (Tom Cruise) is addressing a European Parliament of sorts. He starts off conciliatory and ends up combative, enraging his audience to the point that they stop yelling and start singing "blah blah blah blah blah".

Even when there's music, Digger is an aggressively unmusical film. It's all stops and starts, lurches and stumbles, Dutch angles and extreme closeups. I...