The Wizard of the Kremlin is an exhaustive thriller about post-Soviet Russia that muscles us from the collapse of communism through to the war in Ukraine. Paul Dano stars as Vadim Baranov, a wily political spin doctor (is there any other kind?), while the plot works hard to dramatise its payload of information, folding discussions of troll farms and Chechnya amid the discos and limos and smoke-filled rooms.
The title is misleading: Olivier Assayas’s film finally contains more industry than wizardry. It’s instructive and efficient, like a PowerPoint presentation, but there is a splash of magic here nonetheless, second-billed on the credits and mostly lurking in the wings. Jude Law’s impersonation of Vladimir Putin is a little masterpiece in shades of grey, a stone-cold character study that transforms the film’s second half. “He’s the man of the hour,” an oligarch quips of the onetime FSB chief, little realising that this charmless little lizard is going to outlive them all.
The oligarchs fatally underestimated Putin, filing him as a useful idiot or a willing tool, and most film critics, I fear, have similarly misjudged Jude Law. He was the pretty face with a short shelf-life, destined for a post-stardom limbo of tabloid notoriety and daytime telly. Except that the best performers like to upend our expectations and take on different roles. That happened with Putin, who only played dumb and pliant until he secured his big starring role, and it has also happened with Law, who has always been a much finer actor than advance word would suggest. Producers used to cast him as a poster boy, the cinematic equivalent of a shop window display. But he’s better now, in careworn middle age, when he functions more as a linchpin or a discreet badge of quality. First-billed or second, he ensures that a film comes home safe.
The Wizard of the Kremlin is adapted from the bestselling novel by Giuliano da Empoli, which was itself loosely based on the life of Vladislav Surko, a would-be Rasputin with a background in student theatre and TV advertising. The trouble is that – as played by Dano – the Wizard feels like a construct, an exposition machine, and his mellifluous chatter puts the story to sleep. Putin at first looks like a construct himself, in that the oligarchs regard him as a convenient pawn. And yet Law’s pitch-perfect performance coaxes out the man’s hidden depths, catches his animal cunning and sense of chippy resentment. Putin won’t be told what to do and nurses every perceived slight. Stalin, he says, eventually “found an outlet for his fury”. That’s what he’d like as well. He wants to settle some scores.
Law’s portrayal of Putin is a far cry from the actor’s pulchritudinous early years, when he played the spoiled Lord Bosie in Wilde (1997) and won a Bafta for his turn as heedless, sun-kissed Dickie Greenleaf in The Talented Mr Ripley (1999). But the man grew too hot and spread himself too thin, while the red-tops made hay with his private life (messy divorce, dalliance with the nanny). Law was eventually able to get out from under all that. But he has also carried it with him, like a scar or a stain, to the point where it makes him a more complicated screen presence.
He’s had a great last 10 years; an ongoing creative renaissance. As hardline Pius XIII in Paolo Sorrentino’s HBO series The Young Pope (2016), he’s simultaneously the celestial sun-child and a creature of the shadows, picking his way through the Vatican in a haze of cigarette smoke and gorging himself on Cherry Coke Zero. As Rory, the Eighties City trader in Sean Durkin’s The Nest (2021), he’s the polished facade on a condemned property. And as Henry VIII in Karim Ainouz’s flawed Firebrand (2023), he’s a full-blown blasted ruin, a mound of knackered pale flesh. The King has a sagging white arse and an ulcerated left leg. The courtiers wince at the smell and clap handkerchiefs to their noses. That’s a pretty stark arc; male life in two bookends. From handsome, carefree Dickie Greenleaf on a beach to a putrid old monarch with his nightgowns and bedsores.
Jude Law as Vladimir Putin in the new drama ‘The Wizard of the Kremlin’ (Signature Entertainment)
Henry VIII bears a superficial resemblance to Putin insofar as they are both bad kings – insecure, paranoid and prone to murdering their nearest and dearest. But that’s as far as the similarities go. Law’s performance in Firebrand is a bells-and-whistles spectacular, oversized and grotesque, whereas his contribution to The Wizard of the Kremlin is stealthy and restrained and all the more effective for that. He depicts Putin as limited, colourless and yet fiendishly hard to pin down. Is he a beta-man who struck lucky and managed to crown himself king? Or is he an alpha posing as a beta to give his rivals a false sense of security? Actors playing true-life historical figures have a tendency to grandstand. The same goes for those who are playing dastardly movie villains. Law, though, keeps it quiet, almost humdrum, and makes us lean in and pay attention. He’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a bureaucrat’s suit.
The Wizard of the Kremlin materialises in cinemas a full month after the Academy Awards ceremony, which is to say that it’s a film that missed its moment and didn’t quite make the cut. Probably that’s for the best. It’s a decent movie that covers too much ground. It might have worked better as a TV miniseries. But the current post-Oscar period – the sudden hush after all the noise and bling – is also a chance to remember the great screen performances that went unrecognised this year. Eva Victor in Sorry, Baby (2025); Jesse Plemons in Bugonia (2025); Amanda Seyfried in the borderline bonkers The Testament of Ann Lee (2025). All of them were excellent; somehow none of them were shortlisted. Law was Oscar-nominated for Ripley and then again for Cold Mountain (2003). In a just, decent world, he’d have picked up his third one for this.
‘The Wizard of the Kremlin’ is in cinemas from 17 April
