It’s been six months since Olivier Assayas’ “Wizard of the Kremlin” made its debut at the 82nd Venice Film Festival and, after very mixed reviews, struggled to secure U.S. distribution.
Suffice it to say, the film has finally found a home at Vertical Entertainment, which has acquired North American rights to “Wizard of the Kremlin,” a political drama tackling the rise of Vladimir Putin. The cast includes Paul Dano, Alicia Vikander, and Jude Law.
In the film, Law plays Putin with total command—decisive, charismatic, cunning. It’s a performance so concentrated that whenever he’s on screen, the movie ignites. He comes off as the sharpest, most competent figure in the room, a shrewd go-getter in a political swamp. Magnetic is the right word to describe his performance.
Sadly, Putin slips in and out of scenes and, in fact, completely disappears from the third act. Assayas, who co-wrote the script with Emmanuel Carrère, doesn’t really want to make a movie about Putin. He wants to make a movie about Vadim Baranov (Paul Dano), a television producer turned political operator who helps build up Putin for the Russian public. Dano, like Law, also speaks in a British accent, and he underplays everything. He’s effective enough, but he’s no match for Law, who gets only a fraction of the screen time.
They stretch the film to 150 minutes, and the result feels unfinished and episodic. Putin’s rise is a fascinating saga, but all I kept thinking about was how good a TV miniseries it would have been, with fuller, more fleshed-out characters; the format would fix the gaping narrative holes the film has.
Assayas (“Irma Vep,” “Carlos,” “Personal Shopper”) seems trapped between wanting to make a sprawling political chronicle and a character study of a second-tier character. The movie has ambition but rarely takes off. When Law is on screen, you want more of him. When he isn’t, you miss his presence.
Vertical is eyeing a 2026 release for ‘Kremlin.’
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