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Paper Tiger
Written and directed by James Grey, Paper Tiger, the opening night film at the 64th New York Film Festival, investigates the boundaries of family love and responsibility. Factoring in autobiographical elements and powerful emotions from his own life, Grey elevates an ordinary family to myth and tragedy.
With the classicism and nuanced style found in his Armageddon Time and other films, Grey places his characters in a crucible. He allows them to be caught up in the inexorable fates unraveling from their flaws. The resulting heroes’ journey tests their inner strength for making hard decisions that may jeopardize their own lives. Either they bow down like cowards, run away, or make a noble sacrifice for others.
A Quote from Aeschylus
The film opens with a title screen in black and white with a quote from Aeschylus’ Agamemnon: “Let there be wealth without tears; enough for the wise man who will ask no further.” Ah, but in the oligarchic economy of the United States, captivated by the American Dream of wealth “fit for a king,” is enough ever enough?
The quote implies one of the themes of Paper Tiger as an object lesson. Grey examines the story of Pearl brothers Irwin (Miles Teller) and Gary (Adam Driver). The brothers embark on a project to make substantial money by cleaning up the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, NY. For Gary, a former NYPD cop who works as a consultant, the money would get him though his financially draining divorce. For Irwin, it would pay for their sons’ college, a lifestyle his sons and wife would respect, and a possible move to Great Neck, Long Island where it’s safer. Also, the brothers would be working together, something they discussed for years, with Irwin, a civil engineer, providing the expertise and Gary the contacts.
Disaster
Instead of Gary’s contacts working seamlessly, the former cop, out of touch with the current NYC crime scene, naively hasn’t vetted the people they plan to work for. Unwittingly, he entangles the pair in a scheme that involves a front man who covers for a global criminal network.
The pursuit of more wealth, an evanescent dream, unearths the flaws in the Pearl brothers’ characters. Ironically, ego and a sub rosa competition with each other, stoked by Irwin’s sons, lead to their downfall. Thus, the comfortable family dynamic we note in the beginning of the film turns upside down. This occurs after a disastrous event that Irwin triggers, a devastating harm from which they will never recover.
Landing the Family Tragedy
Grey superbly finishes this tragedy by making it intimate and personal. Beginning with the summer of 1986, with attention to detail and 35mm film, the movie suggests the seediness and decay suffusing the neglected boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn. In the city’s dark underbelly, where most of the action takes place, the rot and corruption sloughs off from illustrious Manhattan, the embodiment of the illusory American Dream.
Meanwhile, the Reagan administration, servicing the millionaire corporate class, is in the process of giving amnesty to an influx of immigrants without papers, many of whom are Brighton Beach Russians who are part of the Russian mob. It is these individuals Gary and Irwin attempt to work with, though they have no intention of cleaning up environmental pollution.
Contrasts Create Suspense
Contrasting the homely scenes of the Pearl family around dinner and breakfast against the murderous criminals dumping toxic waste into the canal, Grey heightens the film’s suspense. The evil spills onto the family like a toxic acid. When Irwin mistakenly ignores Gary’s guidance and with pride takes his sons to see his new job site, he opens them up to danger. Two thugs threaten Irwin’s sons in a terrifying car scene.
The acting is so good that we can’t help but think about how no child or teenager should have to experience such threats of violence. If they don’t come out without PTSD it would be a miracle. This disaster, the wussiness of Irwin’s response, and the fury of wife Linda (Scarlett Johansson) metastasize. As the suspense builds ,chilling the audience to the bone with a home invasion of the Pearl family’s safety and sanctity, nebbishy Irwin and his medically compromised Linda come undone.
The Brick Wall
Unless the once competent Gary comes to the rescue, his assurances that the owner of the clean-up company is just a “paper tiger” (whose growl hides empty threats) are useless. On a fact-finding mission to end the brutal intimidation, Gary runs head-on into a brick wall that leaves him and the family bloodied with no way out. To make matters worse, his friends at the NYPD and FBI tell him times have changed and they are over their heads with the Russian global crime syndicate that makes the Genoveses look like pussycats. If this is the result of Reagan’s glasnost and the promise of amnesty for immigrants, who needs it?
The pressure intensifies when Irwin rejects Gary as family, then excludes him from his son’s graduation party. Obviously, Irwin’s pride of ego ignores his own accountability, failures, and jealousy of his brother as he projects his own foibles onto Gary. At that juncture Irwin humiliates himself and becomes the equivalent of a fussy, human worm. But only the audience notes what goes down in the argument between the brothers in a superbly acted scene between Driver and Teller. Grey heightens that personal intimacy when Gary, alone in his car, responds emotionally to the disastrous events that he promised Irwin he would clean up to stop the Russian mob terrorizing their family.
What Must Be Done?
The inevitability of what must be done is both heartbreaking and hopeful. In a masterful conclusion we learn the full measure of silent heroes, and we recognize that in the Pearl family, there are no paper tigers.
On a broader scale, Grey’s storytelling references the 1980s as an inflection point in New York, the city of the world. In Paper Tiger, the Russian global criminal network will stop at nothing to insure immunity for the harmful consequences effected during their unlawful pursuit of money and power. From the Reagan-era microcosm the film depicts, shadows evolved into what we see today in a MAGA macrocosm: a proliferation of global terrorist criminal corporate cabals that own the U.S. Congress as well as the executive and judicial branches. And these prevent justice in what has become an American nightmare for all but the multi-millionaire/billionaire class.
Paper Tiger will be in select theaters in the United States on November 13, 2026, before expanding to a wide release on November 20. It’s a terrific film.
