The Wizard of the Kremlin

4/23/2026

I suppose to be fair to Paul Dano, he does have something of the look of an apparatchik to him, but otherwise he really fails to deliver anything of the complexities or menace in this depiction of the rise of Vladimir Putin. OK, so Jude Law doesn't exactly convince in that latter role, either, but at least he does resemble his man! "Vadim" (Dano) is an aspiring film-maker of no great skill who ends up working as a television producer just as Boris Yeltsin is beginning to lose his grip. His benefactor, billionaire Boris Berezovsky (Will Keen) convinces him that the next man for the job of President could be the director of the FSB - a latter day iteration of the KGB. Putin is no fool, he knows he has limited appeal to the masses and hates public speaking, but "Vadim" convinces him that can

5/12/2026

Political leaders often don’t rise to that level of power without the strategic scripting concocted for them by the little-known kingmakers behind them. And that’s what this fact-based, though satirically fictional, political thriller about the rise of Russian president Vladimir Putin (Jude Law) seeks to chronicle. The film tells the story of professional political fixer Vadim Baranov (Paul Dano), who rises from art school student to television producer to “the Czar’s” righthand man, doing whatever it takes to promote and ensure the power of his boss after the resignation of President Boris Yeltsin (George Sogis) in 1999. Baranov is portrayed here as a soft-spoken schemer who doesn’t hesitate to play both sides of the fence to add to the unbridled clout of the Russian strongman, even if th