New York, 1986. Irwin Pearl is a naïve engineer living a modest suburban life with his wife Hester and their two young sons. So when his brother Gary, a former cop with easy charm and sharp European suits, offers him a seemingly lucrative business proposition, Irwin can hardly say no. But at the Gowanus Canal, he witnesses something he was never meant to see, and the brothers are suddenly pulled into a dangerous confrontation with the newly emerging Russian mafia, men far more ruthless than either of them can comprehend. As the threat of violence closes in on their homes and Hester sounds the alarm, Irwin desperately tries to protect his family, while Gary is forced to make an impossible choice to save the people he loves.

Gary dismisses the Russians as paper tigers, all show and nothing underneath, but the phrase may describe him just as well. Rooted in the New York of James Gray’s own youth, the film is also a tender portrait of an ordinary family doing its best in difficult circumstances, held together by love even as the ground shifts beneath them. Rich in the textures of the era, from family dinners to the city’s grimy streets, it is a deeply felt and intense crime thriller about brotherhood, loyalty and the true cost of a deal that seems too good to be true.