Paper Tiger

Paper Tiger may be built from recognizable Gray pieces, but he keeps finding new variations inside the same mournful blues. The result is familiar in outline, but authentic, poignant, and quietly devastating.

Gray is no stranger to saga about fraternal strains, but never has he so forcefully tugged at the ties that bind, or more sensitively observed how they can suffocate an entire family when a certain force pulls on them hard enough.

Paper Tiger is partially a film about ‘more money, more problems,’ but also, quite powerfully, a study on how the tantalizing facade of the American Dream is an express elevator to hell for anyone who desires to outstrip the fate of their economic realities.

As is often the case with this writer-director, Gray’s film has a dim view of the American Dream but, if some of the script’s contours are familiar, Paper Tiger’s quiet intensity and growing sibling tension make it a compelling experience.

Paper Tiger hits all the notes you’d expect from an '80s-set crime drama, but the film lacks anything else to make it stand out from the rest.

The movie is engineered to be seen as “powerful.” Right now, though, I’d say that he’s an ace director who’s still being undercut by the holes in his screenplays.

The film is very much a paper tiger — what feels at first like a prestige production is ultimately toothless and unconvincing.