'Paper Tiger' Review: Adam Driver in James Gray's Bruising Drama
From left: Miles Teller, Adam Driver, Roman Engel, Gavin Goudey and Scarlett Johansson in 'Paper Tiger.'
Cannes Film Festival
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“Let there be wealth without tears; enough for the wise man who will ask no further.” It’s fitting that the Aeschylus quote on the opening of James Gray’s riveting Paper Tiger evokes Greek tragedy. In this piercing account of the American Dream in tatters, the magnitude of that dimension feels appropriate, echoing the currents of betrayal, fear and death that course through the film like rivulets of blood. Calling it a sequel would be reductive, but the haunting drama is a companion piece to Gray’s 2022 film, Armageddon Time, again rooted in the director’s childhood. But it’s closer both thematically and tonally to his brooding 1994 debut feature, Little Odessa.
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That lends Gray’s ninth and arguably best film a gratifying full-circle symmetry. The director has often mined personal and family history for dramatic inspiration — the Vanessa Redgrave character dying of a brain tumor in Little Odessa, just as Gray’s mother did; the passage of his émigré grandparents through Ellis Island, which informed key parts of The Immigrant; his own bittersweet coming of age, when his eyes were opened to prejudice and inequality in Armageddon Time.
Paper Tiger
The Bottom Line
A drama of almost overwhelming power.
Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Competition)
Cast: Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson, Miles Teller, Roman Engel, Gavin Goudey, Cindy Katz, Patrick Murney, Victor Ptak, Dimiter D. Marinov, Yavor Vesselinov
Director-screenwriter: James Gray
Rated R,
1 hour 55 minutes
Paper Tiger is fundamentally a crime thriller, clearly adopting a free hand with fictionalization. But it’s just as much a domestic drama that plucks elements from Gray’s childhood, casting Scarlett Johansson and Miles Teller as his parents Hester and Irwin, variations on Esther and Irving, the roles played by Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong in Armageddon Time.
Initial plans were for Hathaway and Strong to reprise those parts, but when scheduling conflicts caused both actors to drop out, Gray decided to take the project in a different, more heightened direction. It became a bracing melodrama — the good kind, fueled by raw emotional power, not the artificial kind that traffics in overwrought audience manipulation — with a dark, burdened heart.
Gray and his older brother are again represented, this time as Scott (Gavin Goudey), about to turn 18 and go off to college, and Ben (Roman Engel), the younger brother he picks on. They both worship their Uncle Gary (Adam Driver), a former cop who is everything their engineering nerd dad is not. Gary drives a fancy car, wears sharp suits and, coolest of all, packs a gun in an ankle holster.
It’s not a big leap to imagine Gary getting into some shady business dealings, even if his record on the force was clean and he has remained in good standing with bureau chief Bob (Patrick Murney), a buddy who can occasionally be tapped for useful information.
A century earlier, Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal was among the world’s most polluted waterways, befouling the entire Eastern Seaboard with tons of toxic waste. Even in 1986, the eye-watering stench of the murky waters remained. Irwin at first scoffs at the idea that the decaying industrial area could ever be gentrified. But Gary — who buttered up his brother by rolling up for dinner with caterers from Peter Luger Steak House and is considered in the family to have the Midas touch with business deals — persuades Irwin to hear him out on a proposed partnership.
Downplaying the fact that he’s in talks with the Russian mob to nail a lucrative contract, Gary whisks Irwin over to Gowanus to see their supposed cleanup operation and meet the thuggish type in charge, Alexei (Yavor Vesselinov). The Russians are looking for a way to get around city regulations, so Gary attempts to convince them they need his connections and his brother’s engineering know-how, proposing a consulting agreement. Despite being told by Gary to let him do the talking, Irwin starts asking questions, making Alexei prickly.
This is Driver’s best role in some time. Gary is a calculated charmer adored by his brother’s fa