Adam Driver, Miles Teller, and Scarlett Johansson lead James Gray's new American epic Paper Tiger, which makes its North American premiere this Friday to open the 64th New York Film Festival. The film debuted earlier this year at Cannes.

Gray returns to his native New York for the project and, for a second consecutive feature, explores the city's working-class milieu circa the 1980s with a narrative that recalls earlier crime pictures. Cinematographer Joaquín Baca-Asay teams with the director once again, crafting an aesthetic that The Film Stage describes as largely gone from modern cinema.

The official synopsis lays out the stakes: "In James Gray's deeply felt and intense drama, two brothers become entangled in a scheme that turns out to be too good to be true. As they try to navigate their way through the dangerous world of the Russian mafiya, family bonds begin to fray with life-altering consequences."

The Film Stage's Luke Hicks, reviewing the film at Cannes, placed it within Gray's roster of New York-set crime dramas — while stopping short of calling it the director's finest. "Paper Tiger isn't quite the triumph that Gray managed in similarly set and themed work (The Yards still wears that gold, with We Own the Night taking silver), yet it's certainly something to behold, the type of film that doesn't take things so far as desired while lingering still," Hicks wrote in the outlet's Critic's Pick review.

He continued: "It plants seeds of lavish characterization, heart-wrenching drama, and gutting tension that leaves one thinking about these people, these places, and the world we live in with a raw sting, as if all of it, down to the bone, is culled directly from history, not a single shrewd detail made up."

The comparison carries weight. The Yards (2000) and We Own the Night (2007) stand among Gray's most acclaimed explorations of family, crime, and loyalty in New York — territory Paper Tiger now revisits with a marquee cast. Driver, Teller, and Johansson anchor the story of two brothers pulled into the Russian mafiya's orbit, with the 1980s setting placing the film alongside Gray's recent period work in the same working-class register.

A new trailer for the film has arrived ahead of its November 13 theatrical release. The footage previews the film's period texture and the fraternal relationship at its center — the scheme that proves too good to be true and the family bonds that begin to fray.

The 64th New York Film Festival opening marks a high-profile platform for the film's North American run. Gray, a New York filmmaker through and through, last worked in this milieu in his previous feature, and the Cannes reception — including The Film Stage's Critic's Pick designation — suggests Paper Tiger lands as a measured, substantial entry in his filmography rather than a crowning achievement.

Audiences can judge for themselves when Paper Tiger opens theatrically on November 13, following its festival launch this Friday.