Paper Tiger

In James Gray’s deeply felt and intense drama, two brothers, Gary Pearl (Adam Driver), a tough ex-cop, and Irwin Pearl (Miles Teller), his younger engineer sibling, become entangled in a scheme that turns out to be too good to be true. As they try to navigate their way through the dangerous world of the Russian mafia in 1980s New York, family bonds begin to fray with life-altering consequences.

Gray’s latest sees the director in top form and returning to the more intimate settings of his early-career triumphs Little Odessa (1994) and The Yards (2000). Along with Driver and Teller’s compelling performances, Scarlett Johansson is captivating as Irwin’s wife, a devoted mother whose own fate becomes inextricably linked to the tense proceedings. Culminating with a masterfully crafted climactic sequence, Paper Tiger is a rich novelistic family drama and one of the year’s standout American films.