'The Wizard of the Kremlin' Review
- Juli Horsford
- 4 hours ago
- 2 min read
Release Date: 05/15/26 [Cinemas]
Genre: Biography. Crime. Drama. History. Romance. Thriller.
MPAA: Rated R.
Distributor: Vertical.
The Verdict: A Maybe
The Wizard of the Kremlin is adapted from a book of the same title by Italian-Swiss author Giuliano da Empoli that was published in 2022. The fictional book follows the imagined life of an advisor, Vadim Baranov, who works with Vladimir Putin during his ascent to power. The book functions as a confessional that’s rife with political musings and a thoughtful exploration of power and its corrupt nature.
The movie version doesn’t quite live up to its source material. Paul Dano helms the film as Vadim Baranov and somehow manages to craft both the most boring and the most annoying vocal register, accent, and disposition for the character. He’s in almost every scene as we chart Vadim’s rise from university theater nerd to TV producer to Putin spin doctor over the course of the two-hour and seventeen-minute runtime.
The usually brilliant Dano struggles to give Vadim anything other than a flat affect that’s about as compelling to watch as a dead fish. His surrounding castmates don’t fare much better. Alicia Vikander takes a turn as the enigmatic Ksenia, who we first meet at a party where she performs a growling, grungey song while parading a naked man around on a leash. Another typically brilliant actor, Vikander, phones in a forgettable performance that can be more easily forgiven because she has far less to work with than Dano.
And then there’s Jude Law, who is actually quite stunning as Putin. His looks and mannerisms are identical to the real-life Putin and showcase Law’s very technically precise (and very rarely seen) physical acting abilities. But when he opens his mouth, his British accent throws a wrench into the otherwise convincing performance. In fact, every actor sports a different accent. There’s American, English, Russian, etc. Instead of seeming like an artistic “this sort of corruption can happen anywhere” choice, it mucks up the flow of scenes and detracts from the story at hand.
Unfortunately, the story at hand moves at a snail’s pace and feels more like a bureaucratic book report than the sort of intense political thriller that the book portrays. Most scenes involve meetings with bigwigs in suits and a voice-over explanation from Dano as Vadim pulls the strings of the political machine with all the spiciness of a glass of water. Characters feel two-dimensional, the story stumbles as it tries to find its footing, and the sluggish pace makes it difficult to stay engaged. Political junkies and Jude Law believers may still have a good time with this, but the rest of us should probably just read the book.
