After successes The Lost City of Z and Ad Astra, James Gray returns to direct the old school crime drama cum suburban nightmare Paper Tiger, a semi-sequel to Armageddon Time, semi-autobiographical piece focused on a particularly turbulent period in his parents’ life. However, if Gray sought to foil himself in one of Hester (Scarlett Johansson) and Irwin Pearl’s (Miles Teller) two teenage boys, then it largely goes unnoticed – as does any hint of a personality for the core three characters (the latter two joined by Adam Driver). In 1980s Queens, ex-police officer and newly proclaimed self-started Gary Pearl enlists his reserved younger brother as a potential engineer for his business idea – a consultancy firm aimed at clearing up the polluted Gowanus Canal. A first meeting with a newly established Russian firm proves positive, but, in a burst of excitement at the prospects of making bank for his family, Irwin enthusiastically takes his sons to the docks one night, unintentionally walking in on a criminal scheme. Though Gary attempts to assuage his potential clients, it isn’t long before Irwin and his family are being terrorised in their own home.
It isn’t that Driver, Teller and Johansson are inadept in their roles, but rather that they are never given the opportunity to showcase anything other than an archetype or a colour – black, grey, pink (or blonde). They are as papery thin as the title proclaims and when tragedy strikes, it is for the actors we know that we feel rather than the characters they embody. Paths are begun, then shut down, a hint of an idea emerges only to flicker and blow out – Hester’s storyline feels heavy and significant, yet we are consistently taken away from her during the most charged of moments. Meanwhile, Irwin’s troubled relationship with money, which seems to emerge only when his children briefly complain of poverty (as only a child in a perfectly nice suburban house would), is rushed, coincidental, situational even. Even the inciting incident, in which he shows up unannounced while the Russians dump oil into the canal, feels like a second thought. What works in Paper Tiger – and what saves it – is Gray’s aptitude for building tension, for creating a sudden shift in tone. The sense of danger, of something impending, of a jump scare without there ever being one is truly sensational to witness on the big screen, an adrenaline, edge-of-your-seat pump that peaks during a home break-in scene in which Irwin holds nothing but a toy gun he has found in his son’s room. In this moment, all feeling of power is stripped bare, and there is nothing but a beating vulnerability onscreen, one that Driver, Teller and Johansson each embody beautifully. You’ll never look at a blade of grass the same way again.
Paper Tiger screened at the London Film Festival and will release in UK cinemas from 5 February 2027.
