Director James Gray (Armageddon Time) travels back to 1986 for Paper Tiger, a family drama about the way ordinary life and criminal activity sometimes intersect. The movie's criminal backdrop centers on the moment when the Russian Mafia began to embed itself in the US, particularly in Brighton Beach, NY.
Miles Teller, perhaps a trifle miscast, plays Irwin Pearl, a Jewish father who works as a reservoir engineer, not a job typically found in crime movies, but Pearl understands complex environmental projects and knows something about negotiating with government agencies.
Adam Driver appears as Gary Pearl, an opportunistic ex-cop who believes he can profit from Russian mobsters who profess an interest in cleaning up the blighted Gowanus Canal, an industrial Brooklyn waterway.
Gary urges his brother to join him in a consulting effort designed to help the Russians deal with complicated city regulations, a cash grab with a veneer of legitimacy -- at least in Gary's view.
Sincere and perhaps in awe of his streetwise older brother, Gary agrees, but an innocent mistake puts him crosswise with the mob. Trying to impress his sons (Gavin Guidry and Roman Engel), he takes them to the canal, where his “offense” occurs.
Gray is one of the few directors I know who depicts a part of New York Jewish life that seldom makes it to the screen, the aspirational working class. In Agmageddon Time, Jeremy Strong played a Jewish plumber who took a stern disciplinary approach toward his two sons. In Paper Tiger, Irwin aspires to send his older son to an Ivy League university. Irwin's business is doing well, but why not aim for more?
The more flamboyant Gary helps businesses with their security. Charming and charismatic, he knows his way around a shady deal. His nephews are impressed by his sleek blue Mercedes and his buoyant generosity. He lives large.
The movie puts two very different brothers in a cauldron full of trouble and then brings it to a boil. Underestimating the Russians, Gary calls them paper tigers, all front and no follow-through. He's wrong; the Russians do not play.
As Irwin's wife, Scarlett Johansson plays the family's skeptic. Wary of Gary's wheeling and dealing, she worries about her kids, and eventually faces a crisis of her own, a development that may be a bit too much for a movie that's already loaded with problems.
For the most part, Gray's casting works. Driver has become an expert at playing characters with plenty of surface shine. Sporting an ’80s housewife’s hairdo (a wig?), Johansson fits perfectly into the Queens milieu, and the fact that Teller and Driver don't look like brothers can be regarded as a minor distraction.
The small performances — Victor Ptak as mob boss Semione Bogoyavich, for example — have gritty authenticity.
The plot wobbles here and there, and the story may be burdened by grander thematic notions about brotherhood and fatherhood than the material can support, a little Arthur Miller, a little Greek Tragedy.
Gray suggests Greek tragedy at the outset, opening the movie with a title card quoting Aeschylus's Agamemnon, "Let there be wealth without tears; enough for the wise man who will ask no further."
Though sometimes on shaky ground, Gray's movie makes an impact. Paper Tiger worked on me. The Russian threat gathers like an unavoidable storm. Clouds of sadness thicken as the movie moves toward a sorrowful conclusion, the heartache of ordinary men playing a game they can’t win.
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