Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson were the biggest names attached to Paper Tiger, and they still aren’t the stars of it. That distinction belongs to Miles Teller, who shows up as the careful engineer and steals the whole damn movie.
The last time Driver and Johansson shared a screen was in Marriage Story, Noah Baumbach’s Brooklyn split-up drama that earned both Oscar nominations. Now they’re back together in Paper Tiger, which premiered at the New York Film Festival and opens theatrically next month. This time, the story takes place in 1980s Queens, and the two leads don’t share nearly as many scenes.
Gary’s Brother
Paper Tiger follows Irwin Pearl (Miles Teller), an engineer who lives with his wife Hester (Johansson) and their teenage sons Scott (Gavin Goudey) and Ben (Roman Engel) in a modest but comfortable home in Queens. His brother Gary (Driver) is the opposite: a former NYPD officer who quit over force corruption, started an unspecified business, and now lives a more jet-setting lifestyle.
The setup is simple. Gary offers Irwin a chance to join a new business deal involving engineering consultations for cleaning up the polluted Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn. The catch: the deal involves Russian-mafia-affiliated property owners, and things spiral quickly.
A Familiar Formula, Turned Inside Out
The movie follows the standard two-brothers-with-a-lifelong-bond formula. One is practical, the other is bold. Usually the bold brother gets in over his head with criminals. Here, it’s the practical brother who does it.
Irwin acts on impulse, excited about the Gowanus deal. He drags his sons along to survey the site at night. When he walks into nearby offices to warn the Russian gangsters about a safety hazard, he catches them in the middle of illegal activity. Though he shows no sign he’ll tell anyone, the Russians are rattled. They terrorize Irwin and his sons, attempt to extort Gary, and the whole thing spirals out of control.
It’s tragic stuff, but it’s not the typical story of brothers building a successful business together. It’s the good-hearted blundering of Irwin that brings chaos and violence, an inversion of the usual crimes-that-bind formula.
Gray’s Acquired Taste
James Gray directs Paper Tiger, and his work is often an acquired taste. He connects dots in a melodramatic rush. Irwin’s insistence on observing the Gowanus at night, with his two boys in tow, is obviously unwise pride. But it reads almost like undiagnosed autism-spectrum behavior, and the movie never addresses it.
Gary’s business-deal bona fides are also murky. He’s obviously not as wealthy as he appears, but was he ever? How did he get there? What is Irwin’s actual job? We never see him working, but he’s not in a desperate financial situation either.
The screenplay requires thematic heft and lofty ambiguities, so characters avoid asking obvious questions. That’s a fair trade for a director who blends sociological interest in criminal enterprises with his own autobiographical notes.
The Performance Payoff
The cast is strong across the board, but the surprises are Teller and Johansson. Johansson’s character emerges slowly through a heartbreaking subplot that feels more lived-in than the crime plot. She also reuses her Noo Yawk accent, which she typically saves for more comedic roles, often on Saturday Night Live.
Driver plays Gary with a smoothness that matches his character’s level of operation. Teller, meanwhile, is the real discovery here.
Not too long ago, Teller was floundering between the young-adult brashness of The Spectacular Now and Whiplash and the grown-up fantasies of The Gorge and Eternity. Then he got the thankless task of playing youthful second banana to a resurgent Tom Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick, a part that felt like a demotion back to Promising Newcomer. Even there, Glen Powell stole some of his thunder.
Teller made his name on a likable, wounded insouciance. That quality translates perfectly into Irwin, the cautious engineer who gets in over his head.
The Bottom Line
Paper Tiger is not a perfect film. Gray’s connecting dots in a rush is a real weakness, and the script dodges questions it should answer. But it’s a companion piece to his earlier work, particularly Armageddon Time, and it blends his sociological and autobiographical interests better than many of his films.
The performances are the draw. Johansson anchors the family dynamics with warmth, and Driver plays Gary with the precise smoothness his character demands. But Teller is the surprise. He accelerates into dad roles after years of wandering, and he lands the lead role here.
This is a movie where the brother with the reckless charisma gets overshadowed by the brother who just wants to keep his family safe. That’s the joke. And it works.
- Premiere: New York Film Festival
- Release: Opens theatrically next month
- Setting: 1980s Queens
- Starring: Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson, Miles Teller
- Director: James Gray
Paper Tiger is a different kind of marriage story. The couple splits up, but the real story is the brother who can’t stop meddling. And the guy who steals the movie is the one nobody expected.
See the video the story is built around at Decider.
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