The Wizard of the Kremlin

“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” righth...”

“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...”