Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver and Miles Teller are on top form in Paper Tiger, another gritty, New York-based crime drama from James Gray (Little Odessa, The Yards, We Own the Night). Echoing events from the writer-director’s own childhood, it’s set in the borough of Queens in 1986. Johansson and Teller play Hester and Irwin, a happily married, successful-enough couple with two sons. Driver plays Irwin’s brother Gary, a flashy ex-cop with political connections and charisma to burn. He brings his brother in on a scheme to clean up a polluted canal for a group of Russian immigrants. What with Irwin’s engineering know-how and his own street-smart confidence, Gary reasons, the deal can’t go wrong. But, of course, it can go very wrong indeed, what with the Russians being ruthless gangsters. “As with his finest work, Gray strikes a beautiful balance between fraught interpersonal drama and nail-biting thrills,” says Nick Schager in The Daily Beast. “Paper Tiger pulsates with heart, rancour, and terror.”
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