Paper Tiger is a harmless adventure movie which tries to cater for juvenile and adult audiences. It is lifted slightly above its station by strong performances from David Niven and Toshiro Mifune. The central theme of what can go wrong if you live your life as one big lie is quite interesting too. It is neither a great movie nor a terrible one: merely a workmanlike, watchable time-filler.
Niven plays Major Bradbury, an English gentleman who has got a job in a troubled Far East country tutoring a young and impressionable Japanese boy about western history. He entertains the boy, Koichi (Ando), by spinning him tales of wartime heroism and derring-do. However, all of Bradbury's tales are fanciful lies in which he presents himself as some kind of all-action hero. Koichi and Bradbury are kidnapped by guerillas, and Bradbury soon realises that he must try to live up the heroic stature he has invented for himself in order to help the boy to survive.
Toshiro Mifune as the boy's father, a Japenese ambassador, gives a strong, moving and convincing performance. Niven also has his moments, especially when he looks into the mirror and is appalled by the "nothing" of a man he sees staring guiltily back at him near the film's climax. The story itself is interesting, but the handling isn't all that special. The film satisfies itself with being a straight-forward kidnap thriller fit for kids and adults alike, but the themes of real and imagined identity could actually have been explored much more closely and maturely if the target audience was just adults. Still, a family film is what the makers decided to make, and a family film is what they've given us. On that level, this will do quite nicely for a rainy Saturday afternoon - even if you'll have probably forgotten it by Sunday!
