PLOT: An American journalist (Jeffrey Wright) is granted a once-in-a-lifetime audience with Vadim Baranov (Paul Dano), a former close advisor to Vladimir Putin (Jude Law), who has fallen out of favor.
REVIEW: The Wizard of the Kremlin, which comes from Olivier Assayas, is strikingly similar at times to perhaps his best film, Carlos, which tackled the rise of an international terrorist for hire. Normally, that would be a good thing, as in its miniseries form Carlos is a masterpiece. Yet, The Wizard of the Kremlin feels a lot like the version of Carlos Assayas cut for cinemas, which was highly episodic and often awkward. As such, I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that there exists another long-form version of this film, as it jumps around from the mid-nineties to 2019 in such a scattershot way that I had a hard time keeping track of what era we were supposed to be in. The fact that it’s cut into chapters, which seem almost arbitrarily assigned, doesn’t help either.
That’s a shame, as there’s a lot to like about The Wizard of the Kremlin, which tells the story of Vadim Baranov—a fictional creation by the author of the book this is based on, but inspired by the life of Putin’s former Deputy Chief, Vladislav Surkov. He’s well played by Paul Dano, who affects a soft-spoken, almost British accent in order to blend in with many of the actors in the film playing Russians, including Jude Law, who’s nearly unrecognizable as Putin.
Many are calling this a Putin biopic, but it’s not. Putin is a supporting character, while we follow Baranov, who started his career as an avant-garde theater director but eventually came to view political theater as his true art. He’s one of the many who helps orchestrate Putin’s rise to power, with us watching the initially reluctant president go to war with the oligarchs who first supported him, establishing himself as an unquestioned leader.
Dano plays Baranov as a near sociopath, never moved on a human level by anything he sees. Rather, he seems almost amused at how out of hand the situation is growing in Russia, with him acting as if the whole thing is little more than a game for him to master. He shows some affection for Alicia Vikander’s character, an intellectual who discovers she enjoys the life of a jet-setting oligarch more than anything else. Otherwise, he is indecipherable—even when interrogated by Jeffrey Wright’s visiting American journalist, who remains offscreen most of the time.
As for Putin, Law portrays him as a man who comes to relish the power he acquires, but also one easily offended by even the slightest lack of deference, exclaiming at one point that the UN treats him like he’s the president of Finland rather than a man controlling an arsenal. He never seems to really harbor any feelings at all. Law is excellent, as is Dano, although I do wonder if anyone is actually going to see this movie, as it’s so cold and matter-of-fact that a theatrical release seems unlikely. Indeed, it feels like this was made for streaming, and perhaps the whole story would have been better served by a prestige limited series that could have taken its time rather than rush through important episodes, such as the sinking of the Kursk, the Sochi Olympics, the Orange Revolution, and more. The Wizard of the Kremlin starts off well, but the rushed, episodic format makes the 157-minute running time a bit tedious.
