Skip to content 
Starring: Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson, Miles Teller
New York-born film director James Gray is just the right amount of cantankerous character for my taste. If you’ve ever seen an interview with the man during his press tour for his latest masterpiece, paper tigerYou will notice in the interview that he gives a very critical view not only on modern films but also on modern society (capitalism being the biggest one). So, despite the fact that the types of projects he chooses occupy a fairly traditional Hollywood territory, the things he focuses on in these stories always tend to be socially exploratory and deeply personal, with tragic implications.
paper tiger This is no exception. This suspenseful and perfectly measured crime drama is one of his strongest works to date. Adam Driver plays Gary Pearl, a confident and personable former cop who confuses his family’s patriarch, his brother Irwin Pearl (Miles Teller), with the Russian mafia. We are on the cusp of a post-Soviet world, and Russian crime is running rampant in New York. It makes sense that Driver’s “everything will be okay” showman type character wants in on the action, which has dire consequences for those on the front lines (Irwin’s two sons and his wife Hester, played by Scarlett Johansson).
The fact that with Paper Tiger he is returning to his old interests and themes – making a crime thriller set in New York that touches on historical issues – may seem to some like a step back. This move could be seen as Gray’s attempt to establish himself after more ambitious genre works (e.g. Ad Astra) or more risk-taking works (e.g. Armageddon Time). But I see this film as a fascinating summary of all his themes and aesthetic ways of working. Visually, he has acquired a level of visual mastery that, while clearly dormant, was not fully present in the early work I saw of him. Directors now have a finely trained intuition to balance cinematic subtlety and expression. That means always providing character, acting, and narrative momentum. One need only observe the film’s final (and indeed only) action set piece to understand how carefully the camera is used.
Despite the entire film’s action-movie thrills, this is the only sequence in which a gun is fired, and it’s one of the best productions I’ve seen in a long time. I kept thinking of Akira Kurosawa’s awesome final set piece in Stray Dog, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Gray used it as inspiration. The way the camera captures the face tracks eye movements, and small camera adjustments and movements place you into the mind of the hapless subject. It’s all very refreshing and something to see.
On the surface, the genres he works in can (or should) appeal to the public: crime, science fiction, adventure epics. Armageddon Time is a uniquely subdued work of art outlier (a great movie nonetheless). But why isn’t Gray’s name mentioned?
The chemistry between Nolan and Fincher is mysterious to me. James Gray is arguably one of the most thoughtful, consistent, and technically gifted filmmakers working today. He has several masterpieces to his name that have been underrated for some time. His previous film, the autobiographical Armageddon Time, is one of them. paper tiger It could be something else. This is the best English-language film I’ve seen so far at this year’s London Film Festival.