PAPER TIGER

I have a suspicion that the script for 'Paper Tiger' came about from director James Gray feeding his old movies into some A.I. software because he needed to whip up something quickly to pay the bills.

"Okay, I tried to make some cool stuff with 'Armageddon Time' and 'Ad Astra' and they both fucking bombed. How does 'Ad Astra', a movie where Brad Pitt fights a baboon in space, crater so badly at the box office? I need something that isn't going to challenge audiences, a reliable vehicle for some big-name actors so that I can finally make some money again," he thought, probably, as he fired up his GPT-3 software to generate the script for 'Paper Tiger'. "Come on, baby... Jamie G needs a new yacht."

The laptop computer hummed appreciatively as his ­fingers moved swiftly over the keyboard.

"I'll feed in 'Little Odessa' (Russian mafia), 'The Yards' (blue collar characters, industrial crime and corruption), and 'We Own the Night' (more Russian mafia plus two warring brothers, one of whom is a cop)," he mumbled to himself as he began frantically dropping and dragging files into the gaping maw of the A.I. vortex. "I'll chuck in some 'Armageddon Time', too (mouthy, close-knit Jewish domestic drama)."

The computer spat back a synopsis immediately: Irwin Pearl (Miles Teller, ) is an earnest, passive reservoir engineer married to Hester (Scarlett Johannson) with two close but squabbling sons, one of whom, Scott (Gavin Goudey), is about to apply to college. The family is starting to feel the pinch, financially. Irwin's brother, a flamboyantly successful ex-cop named Gary (Adam Driver), gets him involved in a lucrative scheme: New York City has agreed to clean up the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, one of the most famously polluted bodies of water in the U.S. Gary proposes that he and Irwin launch a company to get in on the elaborate logistics of the clean-up, all guided by Irwin's expertise as an engineer.

Gary advises that they will have to strike a deal with newly-arrived Russian immigrants who have attached their livelihoods to the workings of the canal. Despite warnings, Gary is confident that he can use his authority as a cop to run roughshod over these "paper tigers". But when Irwin, on a whim, takes his two boys down to the canal one night to show them what their dad is planning, he discovers they are knee-deep in the Russian mafia's territory...

James Gray's fingers hovered stupidly over the keys as he felt - literally felt - all the circuits in his brain jam up like cars gridlocked in the worst traffic jam in the history of internal combustion. The screen suddenly filled up with the word: LOADOVERLOADOVERLOADOVERLOADOVERLOADOVERLOADOVER-LOAD

There was a pop, and then an explosion from the computer's CPU. Gray leaned back in his chair, shielding his face in case the laptop's screen should implode. It didn't. It only went dark. He sat there, looking at the darkness of the screen, heart pounding so hard he felt that it might actually tear itself out of his chest.

Anyway, after sitting through 'Paper Tiger' at Sydney Film Festival's closing night, that's how I imagined the creative process played out.

As he did so effectively in his ultra-depressing first film, 'Little Odessa,' Gray creates an everyday world, blue-collar and somewhat ethnic in feeling, in which there is a fluctuating balance between respectability and corruption. The ebb and flow between the two elements, embodied in Irwin and Gary, is in constant, often volatile flux.

Gray's talented cast performs as an ensemble, but the film's rightly dominant presences are Teller and Johannson, the linchpin couple who understand that it is they who must hold the family together no matter how or what. Johannson, in particular, gets a juicy emotional subplot and most of the big acting moments.

Unfortunately, everything else in the film feels gossamer thin.

Driver never really coalesces as Gary, who is either streetwise and capable or hopelessly naïve, wealthy or poor, well-connected within the police force or a disliked loner, depending on what the plot dictates he is at any particular point. His relationship with Irwin is largely via expository dialogue and could have been genuinely interesting if the two characters had spent more time together onscreen. Irwin's teenage sons? I can't even remember their names. Once again, it would have been nice if the film had given them more time to see how they coped with Bratva thugs waving stilettos under their noses.

The plot whips along frantically, but predictably. If you have seen any of James Gray's crime films, then you will know that his Russian mafia are basically one-dimensional demons for whom human life means very little. The motivation for their assault on the Pearl family is both laughably simplistic and, as the film progresses, somewhat confusing.

My overall feeling about 'Paper Tiger' is that if Gray had decided to hone in on a few of the characters, the film would have been all the better for it. But the film can't decide what it wants to focus on, and the end result, while still watchable due to the stacked cast and a passable time waster for fans of crime drama, is full of unrealised potential and ultimately paper-thin.