Digger director Alejandro González Iñárritu has told RTÉ 2FM's Emma Power that Tom Cruise is playing "an adorable catastrophe" in the new eco-satire.
The story opens as oil baron Digger Rockwell (Cruise) is told that his reckless drilling in Greenland is about to trigger a reckoning of Biblical proportions.
As the seconds tick away, Cruise dials up his performance - and what follows will not be what audiences are expecting.
"It's contradictory that he's impossible not to watch, even when you can be agreeing or not with him," said director Iñárritu of Cruise's portrayal of Digger.
"Even the tragic and terrible decision that he makes, he makes it with candour and fun. It's very hard to do that."
Iñárritu said audiences will also see Cruise showing "fragility and vulnerability" as a character "questions himself".
"He brings together the rounded nature of human beings in a funny way," said the Mexican filmmaker.
When asked why he wanted to make Digger, Iñárritu replied: "It's a film about storytelling.
"I did it for a generation. It's a love letter for a generation that is basically being told everything is fine when they can see it's not. And old people creating a mess and promising them that they will fix things - when they are even creating worse problems than the ones they have created already.
"So, it's an invitation to understand that the stories that we tell ourselves, it's important to understand clearly and to be in the reality. And that reality will be the one that guides us to make the best decisions."
"I think nobody will see or experience this film in the same way, and I love that," he concluded.
Digger is in cinemas from Friday.
