The Wizard of the Kremlin

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https://rialtodistribution.com/film/the-wizard-of-the-kremlin/

Date Reviewed: 21/07/2026

The film opens on a bleak Russian landscape, decorated with slender black foliage and smothered in winter snow.

The opening of the film is stilted. Our protagonist, Rowland (played by Jeffrey Wright), is a little too polished and intellectual for us to immediately glom onto. He is a vessel through which the story unfolds. That said, I loved the literary aesthetic this film possesses. The pace starts almost too briskly before quickly settling down into a passionate study of Russia and the nebulous idea of what exactly the Russian people are.

The Wizard of the Kremlin is a fascinating study of post-Soviet Russian life.

Vadim Baranov is a fascinating, if somewhat restrained, character. The whole film has a startling fast pace; characters drift by rapidly without deeper analysis and introspection. It was when the film slows down that it becomes fascinating. Boris Yeltsin, his tennis obsession, and literally tying him into this chair. The thuggish role of the oligarchs, notably Boris Berezovsky (played superbly by Will Keen). Putin insisting on landing the helicopter.

Eduard Limonov (played masterfully by Magne-Håvard Brekke) is a fascinating vision of what happened to the alternate Russia. Those who created art and culture, who preached religion, who fed the various alternate ways of life are all still active and alive, but they live underground, waiting for the inevitable crumbling of the old order.

There is a restrained authenticity to Jude Law’s Vladimir Putin.

His ideology is simply and powerfully laid out. He is a character who is a product of his own decision-making rather than a victim of circumstances. The moment when Putin begins rambling about Islamists in Chechnya in my mind should have been played for laughs. Putin is an anti-charismatic, deeply composed, and authoritative leader; he eschews pomp and circumstance in exchange for the image of strong, impermeable leadership. What is beneath that is left relatively unexplained and unknown. You only get touches of what is underneath. Presumably because Vladimir Putin is still in power.

The Wizard of the Kremlin opens up to be a dour and deeply serious film. What I struggle with is the lack of introspection. The seriousness smothers a lot of the nuances in the storytelling. Some of the characters become ideological mouthpieces rather than characters with dirt under their fingernails.

In a lot of ways, The Wizard of the Kremlin vindicates a cynic’s view of Russia. An enormous open-air market occupied by oligarchs and ruthless political operators. Barren stretches of road broken up by islands of factories, government offices and the steel citadel that is Moscow. In that way, the film is superb.

However, the film doesn’t dive deeper into the implications of these powerful players on the national and global stage. A dazzling array of snapshots. It would have been a much better documentary rather than a cinematic film.

Paul Dano was the biggest letdown here for me. He has played a Russian before. I found his Count Bezhukov in the adaptation of War and Peace to be heartfelt and resoundingly nuanced. In this, as Vadim Baranov, he is awkward and monotone.

Unable to explore the nuances beneath the surface of a theatre director turned election adviser turned éminence grise to Vladimir Putin.

At the very minimum I think The Wizard of the Kremlin reminds me of how transitory politics and time can be. In ten or twenty years time individuals like Putin will become a part of our wider global history. Those who lifted him up, encouraged him and fostered his own kind of politics will become historical footnotes and little else. Putin will be a controversial historical fact, like Nixon, Trump and Mao.

Powerful people who are known less for the forward society they oversaw in their time but instead built an artificial reality around them. We live in an age of elderly men hunkered in high towers behind gold-plated wire fencing.

It’s why I so like Putin’s nickname of ‘Bunker Grandpa’ rather than the ‘Tsar’. It hints at a stubborn refusal to understand or participate in the wider world.

Reviewed by Nicolas Van Der Haar