“Paper Tiger” Has No Fangs

Paper Tiger (James Gray, 2026) 1 out of 5 stars

It’s never a good sign when a movie character becomes ill, suffering from a deadly disease, and one’s response is a shrug. Yes, in theory we feel bad because we are not sociopaths, but within the narrative the illness feels like a gimmick to ratchet up the cinematic stakes. Such is the case in James Gray’s latest, Paper Tiger, where ineffective melodrama barely props up the scaffold of the piece.

Even worse, the central plot, set in the seedy 1980s New York City underworld where the Russian mafia is making serious inroads, fails to deliver basic thrills, our choice of protagonists either a boastful idiot or a hapless one. While dumb people can be fun to watch spiral downwards, if the surrounding screenplay is equally vapid, the result is a slog. Gray (Armageddon Time) succeeds in very little beyond an exercise in self-indulgence. I sympathized with the ending bullet’s recipient: at least the ordeal was now over.

Miles Teller (Eternity) stars as Irwin Pearl, an engineer who has just moved his family into a new house in Queens. He’s married to Hester (Scarlett Johansson, My Mother’s Wedding). They have two sons, Scott and Ben. Interrupting their relocation is Gary (Adam Driver, Megalopolis), Irwin’s older brother, a retired police detective with big plans ahead.

Over dinner, Gary suggests that he and Irwin mosey on down to the Gowanus Canal to check out a partnership opportunity. With Irwin’s know-how and his own street smarts, Gary wants to set up shop and help certain folks understand the lay of the land and avoid too much snooping around by the authorities. The problem? He has no idea what he’s talking about or who he’s dealing with.

And so things go from sleazy to downright lethal very quickly. Soon, criminal overlords join the fray, to no great surprise, and Irwin’s life is turned upside down. Gary didn’t really have one to begin with, so the turmoil changes little.

I spent a lot of time in Russia in the 1980s and 1990s in business-adjacent situations, and though I pretend to no great understanding of human nature, I could easily tell that some of these guys were very dangerous. Somehow, neither Gary nor Irwin figure things out until the gun is pointed at their head. Dramatic irony is one thing; their behavior strains credulity.

I like the main actors here … usually … but no one can rescue this spiritless, wanna-be-Goodfellas story. Johansson, especially, gets a raw deal, her character reduced to little more than a vehicle for Irwin’s guilt. Paper Tiger never roars, only meows, its toothless monologue to itself a snooze from start to finish.

Christopher Llewellyn Reed

Chris Reed is the editor of Film Festival Today. A member of both the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) and the Washington DC Area Film Critics Association (WAFCA), and a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic, Chris is, in addition, lead film critic at Hammer to Nail and the author of Film Editing: Theory and Practice.