With this muscular, heartfelt and sombre new picture set in 1980s New York, James Gray again resurrects the spirit of Elia Kazan in a blue-collar tragedy of fraternal loyalty and betrayal; a movie about men and their horror of appearing weak and failing to protect their families. Paper Tiger has that distinctive Gray colour palette: a perpetual late-afternoon autumn of subdued ochres, reds and browns. And there are his keynote family supper scenes, the characteristic presence of the Russian community in New York, and the potent, tribal codes of the NYPD: part mob, part trade union, part masonic clan whose membership responsibilities and perks go on well after retirement.

Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson and Miles Teller give weighted, intelligent performances at the film’s centre: all three characters, in their different ways, have Springsteenian hungry hearts. Teller is Irwin Pearl, a modest, working-class guy who is a qualified engineer in Queens, doing well at his trade but still concerned about paying for his teen sons’ – Scott (Gavin Goudey) and Benjamin (Roman Engel) – college education. He’s married to Hester, played with forthright authority by Johansson, sporting frizzy hair and glasses that make her look like one of the Golden Girls.

Irwin’s boys idolise their handsome, roguish uncle Gary, played by Driver: a recently divorced ex-cop now setting up various businesses to capitalise on his inside track at City Hall. One night, Gary shows up at Irwin’s family home to let him in on a money-making opportunity that can’t fail. Some Russian businessmen of his acquaintance have gained the rights to run a cleanup operation removing decades’ worth of oil sludge and spillage in the foul-smelling Gowanus canal in Brooklyn. Gary says that these guys need a qualified engineer to provide – via Gary’s new consultancy firm – a full report of what needs to be done, a document that will bolster the Russians’ relationship with the city authorities. There’s a $10,000 fee for simply providing a frank professional assessment.

These Russians can be uncouth and paranoid, says Gary breezily, prior to the Pearls’ uneasy sitdown with them, but they’re just a “paper tiger”. Poor naive Irwin is very overexcited at the easy payday which will provide for his kids, and flattered that his expertise is needed by his big brother, and on a whim takes his boys with him on a dangerously unannounced educational evening visit to the Russians’ stockyard. But to his terror, he finds that these Russians and his slippery brother need his engineering skills as a fig-leaf for their monumentally questionable operation. Gary is already into the Russians for considerably more than 10 grand, a debt that he figures the Pearl brothers’ contribution will easily redeem, and he genuinely believes there is big money in it for them both in the long run, as long as silly Irwin doesn’t lose his nerve.

In their ways, Gary and Irwin believe in raising a family and working hard for the American dream: Gary’s divorce means that family-man status is beyond him but he respects it in Irwin, and both men believe that Scott and Benjamin have what it takes to be first-generation middle class. Gary thinks that what the menfolk of his generation can do is provide a financial bedrock for them, with a little street-smart entrepreneurial daring and by not being too squeamish about the rules. As for Hester, she is the one doing the actual parenting, but she is worried by persistent headaches – the cause of which, incidentally, perhaps shows a certain want of subtlety in the film. It’s a meaty drama with big scenes and big but carefully considered performances: a really substantial piece of work from Gray.