James Gray’s Cannes Contender Paper Tiger Pits Adam Driver Against the Mob

Neon opens James Gray’s Paper Tiger in limited release on November 13, with a nationwide expansion a week later. The Cannes competition title reunites Gray with the outer-borough crime stories of We Own the Night.

Gray wrote the script and shot it on 35mm for about $15 million, with Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson and Miles Teller leading the cast.

The story

In 1980s Queens, ex-cop Gary Pearl and his engineer brother Irwin chase a business deal that looks too good to pass up. It drags them into a scheme run by the Russian mob, and soon the gangsters are menacing Irwin’s family in the suburbs and testing everything the brothers owe each other.

The cast

• Adam Driver as Gary Pearl;
• Miles Teller as Irwin Pearl;
• Scarlett Johansson as Hester Pearl;
• Gavin Goudey as Scott Pearl;
• Roman Engel as Ben Pearl;
• Victor Ptak as Semion Bogoyavich;
• Cindy Katz as Iris Belfer.

The production

Filming kicked off in Denville, New Jersey, in June 2025. Joaquín Baca-Asay is the cinematographer, Christopher Spelman composed the score and Scott Morris edited; RT Features’ Rodrigo Teixeira produced. The film runs 115 minutes.

The reviews

Since its May 16 premiere at Cannes, Paper Tiger has earned 85% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 79 on Metacritic. Time’s Stephanie Zacharek called it old school in the best way; Variety’s Owen Gleiberman found it a mix of the grandiose and the implausible.

Release

Paper Tiger opens November 13 in select theaters and November 20 nationwide.