By George & Josh Bate
Adam Driver and Miles Teller play brothers inadvertently caught up with the mob in James Gray’s Paper Tiger, a predictable and formulaic, yet tense and compelling new film screening at this year’s Chicago International Film Festival.
Paper Tiger follows brothers Irwin (Miles Teller) and Gary (Adam Driver), who team up for a lucrative business opportunity to clear a polluted body of water in 1980s Queens. When Irwin accidentally witnesses the Russian mafia engaged in illegal activities along the water, the brothers and their family, including Irwin’s wife Hester (Scarlett Johansson) and their two sons Scott (Gavin Goudey) and Ben (Roman Engel) become targets of the mob.
If the barebones premise of Paper Tiger sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Some Like It Hot, Analyze This, and Lucky Number Slevin are just a handful of movies that follow ordinary people accidentally tangled up with organized crime. Making Paper Tiger even more familiar is the fact that comes from the same filmmaker who made We Own the Night, the 2007 crime drama starring Mark Wahlberg and Joaquin Phoenix that is also set in 1980s New York and follows two brothers whose lives intersect with the Russian mob.
Needless to say, Paper Tiger is far from the most original film, yet its undeniable craft, both in front of and behind the camera, render it a worthwhile watch. Beautifully shot on 35mm by cinematographer Joaquin Baca-Asay, Gray’s film has all the trappings of an old school crime drama, the kind of movie Scorsese or Coppola would have made in the 1980s and probably won a few Oscars for. The pacing is calculated, methodically ramping up in a slower first act before briskly moving from beat to beat for the remainder of the story. The NYC the characters inhabit feels authentic, lived-in, and appropriately grimy, while family values and the strain placed on family bonds anchor the film thematically.
These themes work as well as they do thanks to a duo of strong leading performances from Adam Driver and Miles Teller. The two play brothers who, after a close childhood, have gone on to lead very different lives. Teller’s Irwin is a meek engineer by trade and lives a quiet suburban life with his wife and two teenage boys. Driver’s Gary, meanwhile, is a confident former police officer, who now travels the world orchestrating various business opportunities. Speaking with the cadence of an accomplished used car salesman (and dressing like one too), Gary couldn’t be more dissimilar from his younger brother, yet the two clearly adore and are dedicated to one another.
The brotherly bond is put to the test, however, when the opportunity that Gary looped Irwin into puts them in the crosshairs of the fearsome Russian mob. The writing is glaring on the wall for the direction the story will head in, but the chemistry between Driver and Teller and the naturalism of the latter’s family dynamics make the brothers’ inevitable descent a plight worth investing in.
As the Russian mafia increasingly encroaches upon Irwin’s suburban family life, Gray masterminds a number of palpably tense, expertly paced, and brilliantly framed sequences that ensure the audience feels the same kind of panic and paranoia Irwin and his family do. A nighttime home invasion scene set in Irwin’s home and a climactic shootout in a cornfield in particular are two standout moments that demonstrate Gray is just as capable of crafting a nail-biting thriller as he is a thematically rich drama.
In chronicling the steady deconstruction of the Pearl brothers’ lives, Paper Tiger arrives upon a rare point of novelty through its exploration of hubris and naivety. An unexpected reveal about one of the brothers midway through flips conventions of this kind film on their head by demanding that the audience contest any pre-conceived notions they made about the characters. In subverting expectations in this regard, Gray speaks to how naivety, over-confidence, and good intentions can make for a devastating cocktail of personality traits.
As the storyline involving the Pearl brothers concludes in painfully predictable fashion, Paper Tiger often pivots to a subplot involving Hester, Irwin’s wife played by Scarlett Johansson. While featuring the film’s most gut-wrenching and tender elements, this subplot feels ill-suited to the broader film and, if expanded, could have made a solid feature film on its own. Instead, Gray decides to interject the compelling brotherly drama with scenes involving Hester as she navigates the sudden onset of troubling physical symptoms. And, like the central storyline, the subplot proceeds forward and ultimately concludes with agonizing foreseeability.
Most resonant to the writers of this review, however, is Paper Tiger’s focus on two brothers forced to navigate a taxing and life-threatening situation. Driver and Teller masterfully sell the brothers’ love for one another at the start of the film, while their performances ascend to new heights of quality as the story demands that the actors deftly navigate mounting strain in the relationship. Paralleling their brotherly bond and making it all the more powerful is the relationship between Irwin’s sons Scott and Ben, whose lives also intersect with the Russian mob. Across the pair of brotherly relationships, Gray’s film examines how hardship can both pull apart and bring together siblings and ultimately comments on the endurance of brotherly love through it all.
VERDICT: 7/10
Screened at this year’s Chicago International Film Festival, Paper Tiger is a predictable and formulaic, yet tense and compelling crime drama. Beautifully shot on 35mm, James Gray’s film has all the trappings of an old school crime drama, anchored by strong leading performances from Adam Driver and Miles Teller, whose chemistry and naturalism make the brothers’ inevitable descent a plight worth investing in. While the storyline is far from original and concludes in painfully predictable fashion every step of the way, Gray crafts palpably tense, expertly paced sequences that demonstrate his ability to deliver a nail-biting thriller as well as a thematically rich drama. Through its exploration of the relationship between hubris and naivety as it relates to strain placed on family bonds, the film examines how hardship can both pull apart and bring together siblings, ultimately commenting on the endurance of brotherly love through it all. The kind of film Scorsese or Coppola would have made (and probably won a few Oscars for) in the 1980s, Paper Tiger makes for familiar, yet undeniably captivating viewing.
Paper Tiger is in select U.S. theaters on November 13, before expanding to a wide release on November 20.