{"id":801612,"date":"2026-05-16T23:22:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T23:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/801612\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T23:22:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T23:22:14","slug":"paper-tiger-review-adam-driver-in-james-grays-bruising-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/801612\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Paper Tiger’ Review: Adam Driver in James Gray’s Bruising Drama"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\u201cLet there be wealth without tears; enough for the wise man who will ask no further.\u201d It\u2019s fitting that the Aeschylus quote on the opening of James Gray<\/a>\u2019s riveting\u00a0Paper Tiger\u00a0evokes 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\u2019s 2022 film,\u00a0Armageddon Time<\/a>, again rooted in the director\u2019s childhood. But it\u2019s closer both thematically and tonally to his brooding 1994 debut feature,\u00a0Little Odessa.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThat lends Gray\u2019s ninth and arguably best film a gratifying full-circle symmetry. The director has often mined personal and family history for dramatic inspiration \u2014 the Vanessa Redgrave character dying of a brain tumor in\u00a0Little Odessa, just as Gray\u2019s mother did; the passage of his\u00a0\u00e9migr\u00e9\u00a0grandparents through Ellis Island, which informed key parts of\u00a0The Immigrant; his own bittersweet coming of age, when his eyes were opened to prejudice and inequality in\u00a0Armageddon Time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tPaper Tiger\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n

\tA drama of almost overwhelming power.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tVenue<\/strong>: Cannes Film Festival (Competition)
Cast<\/strong>: Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson, Miles Teller, Roman Engel, Gavin Goudey, Cindy Katz, Patrick Murney, Victor Ptak, Dimiter D. Marinov, Yavor Vesselinov
Director-screenwriter<\/strong>: James Gray
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRated R,
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t1 hour 55 minutes\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\tPaper Tiger\u00a0is fundamentally a crime thriller, clearly adopting a free hand with fictionalization. But it\u2019s just as much a domestic drama that plucks elements from Gray\u2019s childhood, casting Scarlett Johansson<\/a> and Miles Teller<\/a> as his parents Hester and Irwin, variations on Esther and Irving, the roles played by Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong in\u00a0Armageddon Time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tInitial 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 \u2014 the good kind, fueled by raw emotional power, not the artificial kind that traffics in overwrought audience manipulation \u2014 with a dark, burdened heart.<\/p>\n

\n\tGray 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>), 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tA century earlier, Brooklyn\u2019s Gowanus Canal was among the world\u2019s 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 \u2014 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 \u2014 persuades Irwin to hear him out on a proposed partnership.<\/p>\n

\n\tDownplaying the fact that he\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis is Driver\u2019s best role in some time. Gary is a calculated charmer adored by his brother\u2019s family; anytime he visits their modest suburban home in Queens feels like an occasion. But he\u2019s also selective about sharing the truth, counting on Irwin\u2019s lack of street smarts by reassuring him that the Russians are paper tigers, far less threatening than they appear.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tLike an expert salesman, he convinces Irwin that a financial windfall is right at their fingertips. He shrugs off his brother\u2019s concern about where all that industrial sludge will go by saying their involvement will be purely in an advisory capacity; it\u2019s up to the Russians what they do with the information he and Irwin provide.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a harrowing sequence that dials the churning dread up several notches, Irwin drives the boys over to Brooklyn one school night, against their frazzled mother\u2019s wishes, to show them Uncle Gary\u2019s get-rich-quick scheme. He leaves his sons in the car as he steps out to inform the workers of a safety hazard, which turns Alexei and his goons violent. While Irwin is getting smacked around, two mobsters terrorize the boys in the car before kicking them out and driving off in it. The most chilling moment is when Alexei after looking at Irwin\u2019s papers says, \u201cSo now we know where you live.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWe are in prime James Gray territory as Irwin wrestles with the instinct to call the cops, he and the completely freaked-out boys opt to keep the incident from Hester and tensions escalate between him and Gary. It\u2019s gripping stuff, directed with unerring tonal control and blanketed in ominous stormclouds by Christopher Spelman\u2019s magnificently unsettling, full-bodied score, mixed in with the occasional bit of lugubrious Russian choral music.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile Gary is pissed at his brother for sticking his nose in and ruffling the Russians\u2019 feathers, he\u2019s cocky enough to believe he can saunter in and fix things with a few calming words. But that\u2019s not how mob boss Semion Bogoyavich (Victor Ptak), who controls a vast criminal network, operates. The Russians regard Irwin\u2019s unannounced visit as a grave breach of trust, setting a hefty price to make the problem go away.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe spiral of menace is breathtaking as Gary continues to dig them in deeper with his misplaced confidence and reckless moves, and a bone-chilling warning left in the dead of night forces Irwin to bring Hester up to date. Johansson has never been better, notably so as she\u2019s simultaneously gripped by rage and blood-curdling fear when she learns of the danger to which Irwin exposed their sons.<\/p>\n

\n\tTeller also expands his range in an affecting performance that sees Irwin struggling with regret, self-castigation, disillusionment with the brother he has always admired and stone-cold terror for the fate of his family.<\/p>\n

\n\tMeanwhile, Hester has been privately dealing with mental lapses and throbbing headaches, refraining from telling her family about the medical tests her doctor ordered. Nor does she tell her good-natured meddler of a mother (Cindy Katz), who\u2019s forever nudging them to get out of the city and move to Great Neck. Johansson plays her with a tough edge to match her Queens accent, but Hester is clearly petrified by this perfect storm of ugly events.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a movie that\u2019s almost operatic in its cymbal clashes of violence, its agonizing tensions and vicious threats, the heartstopping scene in which Hester receives her diagnosis at the doctor\u2019s office is perhaps the single most devastating moment. It\u2019s a shock even though it\u2019s been amply foreshadowed.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s no shortage of other dramatic crests, among them a climactic shoot-out in a cornfield that\u2019s a model of steadily mounting suspense. And the ending hits just the right note, both tragic and redemptive.<\/p>\n

\n\tPaper Tiger\u00a0is a great-looking movie \u2014 cinematographer Joaquin Baca-Asay (who shot\u00a0We Own the Night\u00a0and\u00a0Two Lovers\u00a0for Gray) slathers on the dark, gritty textures while never stepping too far into noirish stylization. And editor Scott Morris delivers a compact cut of just under two hours that nonetheless breathes like an epic. While the obvious antecedents outside of Gray\u2019s own body of work might be Coppola or Lumet or Scorsese or Mann, I kept thinking while watching of the early crime films of Akira Kurosawa, from\u00a0Drunken Angel\u00a0and\u00a0Stray Dog\u00a0up to the classic police procedural,\u00a0High and Low.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tGray and his superb cast are in blazing form and full command here in a bruising movie that reveals the heavy price of pursuing the American Dream too recklessly, instead of heeding Aeschylus\u2019 words.\u00a0The Ronald Reagan era now seems a precise point on the country\u2019s timeline when wealth became an obsession, no longer just a goal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cLet there be wealth without tears; enough for the wise man who will ask no further.\u201d It\u2019s fitting…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":801613,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[9],"tags":[76148,6345,297566,49625,323923,171,160307,45567,3390,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-801612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-adam-driver","tag-cannes","tag-cannes-2026","tag-cannes-film-festival","tag-cannes-film-festival-reviews","tag-entertainment","tag-james-gray","tag-miles-teller","tag-scarlett-johansson","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116586830087048968","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=801612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801612\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/801613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=801612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=801612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=801612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}