May 16, 2026 2:54pm PT

‘Paper Tiger’ Review: Miles Teller and Adam Driver Get Ensnared by the Russian Mob in a James Gray Film With More Atmosphere Than Plausibility

The director serves up another hardscrabble outer-borough Jewish family, but the get-rich scheme doesn't play out convincingly.

Owen Gleiberman

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Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

@OwenGleiberman

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Courtesy of Cannes Film Festival

James Gray has always been an intensely personal filmmaker, but his last movie, “Armageddon Time” (2022), took a turn into the explicitly autobiographical — it was all about his experience growing up in dowdy middle-class Queens in the early ’80s, a setting that allowed Gray to take forays into themes of race and pop culture and the shadow of Donald Trump (whose imperious father was a character in the movie). So it’s a bit of a surprise to see Gray, in “Paper Tiger,” return to more or less that same setting and a comparable atmosphere of mouthy, close-knit Jewish domestic psychodrama. “Paper Tiger” is like a spiritual sequel to “Armageddon Time.” The difference is that the new movie has the dread-fueled engine of a neo-New Hollywood vérité thriller.

'Paper Tiger' Review: Miles Teller and Adam Driver Get Ensnared by the Russian Mob in a James Gray Film With More Atmosphere Than Plausibility