Adam Gray

The title is a bit of an own goal. “A paper tiger” is how Adam Driver’s ex-cop, Gary Pearl, dismisses the Russian gangsters who are threatening his brother Irwin (Miles Teller) and his family in Eighties New York. Gary’s claim that the hoods are all talk proves to be wide of the mark, but the film is very much a paper tiger — what feels at first like a prestige production is ultimately toothless and unconvincing.

In competition for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, it was written and directed by James Gray, the New Yorker who has been flattering to deceive for a while now. He did We Own the Night, the nightclub drama with Joaquin Phoenix; Ad Astra, the sci-fi weepie with Brad Pitt; and Armageddon Time, the family saga with Anthony Hopkins. Gray can woo the stars, then: this time it’s Driver, Teller and Scarlett Johansson, who is fitted with a wavy perm and chunky glasses to play Irwin’s wife, Hester.

What on earth keeps these big names coming? We Own the Night was excellent, but since then the quality has declined steadily and this one may be Gray’s worst yet. The evocation of Irwin and Hester’s cosy but neurotic middle-class Jewish home is as hackneyed as the depiction of a Russian underworld populated with unsmiling bosses and leering foot soldiers who say things such as: “You like to die?” If Russians were hoping for some decent PR after a difficult few years on that front, this film does not provide it.

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None of the central trio is bad, but the unsophisticated script and direction do them no favours. Driver is a divorced wideboy who is using his police contacts to develop a variety of dodgy schemes. The latest involves helping Russian mobsters to clear up a canal that is polluted with waste oil, and he asks Irwin, an engineer, to be a consultant. Irwin, one of life’s wallflowers, leaps at the chance and takes his two teenage sons down to the canal to check out Dad’s new project. Big mistake. As Irwin is abused in the gangsters’ office, the boys wait in the car, which is soon surrounded by cartoonish villains…

Johansson’s Hester has a medical subplot, but it feels half-heartedly tacked on to give her something to do other than rail at her husband for getting involved with such a horrible crowd. It’s a shame because Gray is a visual stylist who orchestrates an atmospheric sequence in a field of maize towards the end that reminded me of The Godfather. It would have been a mid-film diversion for Coppola, though — for Gray it’s the grand finale. And you’re left thinking: is that it?

★★☆☆☆

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