Jude Law as Vladimir Putin and Paul Dano as Vadim Baranov appear in “The Wizard of the Kremlin.” (Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment/Gaumont)
Screen Time with Melodie Miller, a review column that looks beyond the trailer and connects audiences to movie perspectives.
Screen Time gives “The Wizard of the Kremlin” a Melodious Thumbs Up
“The Wizard of the Kremlin” opens on an icy blue scene shot through a cluster of tangled and malformed snow-encrusted trees. This is a cold, remote and forsaken place. Perhaps even ugly. Far from Moscow, nothing in view is meaningful. But the message is clear: Vadim Baranov (Paul Dano), the once-upon-a-time spin doctor who supernaturally brought Vladimir Putin to power, has been frozen out of the csar’s inner circle. He walks his dog without once looking over his shoulder.
Olivier Assayas’ adaptation of Giuliano da Empoli’s novel is an alarming exposé of roads that diverge between the pursuit of wealth and the pursuit of power. Assayas builds the narrative around a series of untenable pairings; each chooses a separate path. But in Putin’s Russia, both paths end with authoritarianism and vranyo at the Kremlin’s door: “You know I am lying and I know you know I am lying, but we agree to go along.” Those who refuse the lie are crushed.
The film began streaming on Disney+, Fandango, Hulu and Apple TV in August, arriving weeks before the midterm elections as a timely portrait of political power, psychological tactics of social control and the exploitation of human vulnerabilities.
Paul Dano as Vadim Baranov appears in “The Wizard of the Kremlin.” (Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment/Gaumont)
The Soviet Union has fallen, and two paths are emerging, one of wealth and one of power. Russia is becoming a corrupt but budding democracy producing billionaires. Baranov (Paul Dano) rises to power because of this newfound political and social freedom. Abandoning the free-thinking, fringe avant-garde theater director persona of his youth, he becomes a state-run TV producer for billionaire Boris Berezovsky, then morphs into Putin’s spin doctor, choosing proximity to power as his path. In contrast, his childhood friend Dmitri Sidorov (Tom Sturridge) founds Russia’s first commercial bank and grows increasingly greedy. Both paths are portrayed as degenerating dead ends that lead to imprisonment or death.
Jude Law as Vladimir Putin and Paul Dano as Vadim Baranov appear in “The Wizard of the Kremlin.” (Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment/Gaumont)
At about forty-three minutes into the film, Jude Law enters as the embodiment of the extremely pale, close-cropped, blond-haired civil servant Vladimir Putin. Law masterfully plays a charismatic psychopath and calculated operator whose premeditated control of Russian politics unfolds as moves on a chessboard. Law’s frightening portrayal of Putin, a man raised in extreme poverty, shows him as a petty, small, resentful man with a penchant for revenge.
Putin, aggrieved by the plundering oligarchs, the disruptive Islamic militants in Chechnya and other world leaders who belittle him, sets on a path to seize control and destroy those whom he dislikes. Law’s Putin is malignantly infectious, with a stillness so controlled that the character lodges in the back of your eyes long into the dark of the night.
“They treat me like I’m the president of Finland,” Putin says about other world leaders following a fictional G20 meeting in Berlin. “They’d better watch out. They need to be very careful.”
Dano brings his celebrated interior style of acting (“There Will Be Blood“) to quietly characterize Baranov as the confident architect of control who works without calculating the consequences. His power lies in his proximity to Putin and his willingness to dictate both sides of the autocratic narrative that manufactures the consent of the Russian people. The result is a cultural hegemony that Berezovsky, in exile, calls “a prison the size of a country.”
Alicia Vikander as Ksenia and Paul Dano as Vadim Baranov appear in “The Wizard of the Kremlin.” (Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment/Gaumont)
Ksenia (Alicia Vikander) represents what a free, albeit corrupt, democratic Russia could have been if the 1990s had continued without Putin rising to power. As the representation of a young and free country, she seamlessly portrays an aimless but wealthy wanderer, confused, impulsive and unpredictable, unafraid of making mistakes and course-correcting. She personifies everything Putin’s authoritarian Russia wants to oppress. She is the film’s voice of truth.
Jeffrey Wright attends the red-carpet world premiere of “The Wizard of the Kremlin” at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival in Venice, Italy, on Aug. 31, 2025. (Photo courtesy of Daniele Venturelli/Wire via Getty Images)
If Baranov represents the architect of Putin’s Russia, Lawrence Rowland (Jeffrey Wright) symbolizes America, a country that believes it is watching the Russian ice storm from a safe distance. But no one is safe, Baranov tells him. Baranov reminds Rowland that Americans have stopped caring about politics and distrust their media. The film warns that the darkness of authoritarians is not distinctly Russian.
Jude Law, Alicia Vikander and Paul Dano attend the red carpet world premiere of “The Wizard of the Kremlin” at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival in Venice, Italy, on Aug. 31, 2025. (Photo courtesy of Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)
To appreciate “The Wizard of the Kremlin,” one must understand Russian deep-pan humor, turbulent history and dark psychology. For the film’s characters, born of Soviet scarcity, misery is humor. Baranov blames the fall of communism on Mikhail Gorbachev for raising the price of vodka and confesses that his real problem was his happy childhood, which is not normal in Russia. He tells the Internet Research Agency that to do the job right, they need idiots, not experts. Berezovsky says that with a little hope, Russians will jump out of windows rather than vote. Another character says that New York is fun as long as you can avoid the Americans. While appearing on a Larry King-inspired talk show, Putin says, with a straight face, when asked what happened to the submarine Kursk, “It sank.” This is Russian humor, dark but true.
Audiences who enjoy the nuances of sharp dialogue and psychological maneuvering, mixed with historically inspired intrigue, will be pleasantly surprised. But those expecting “The Wizard of the Kremlin” to be the thriller it’s advertised as will be disappointed. The film is devoid of chase scenes, shootouts and on-screen battles. There is a car bombing, a war scene in Chechnya and an attack on apartment buildings, but each is presented as a news flash, not a dramatic narrative.
The film ends where it began, in the frozen woods far from Moscow. Baranov sends Rowland on his way back to the anesthetized American. Baranov unsuspectingly walks his dog without looking over his shoulder. No one is safe. All roads end at the Kremlin’s door.
Contact CU Independent Writer Melodie Miller at Melodie.Miller@colorado.edu.
