‘The Wizard of the Kremlin’: Jude Law Makes for a Scary Vladimir Putin

There’s a big difference between reciting history and dramatizing it, and The Wizard of the Kremlin falls victim to doing the former far more than the latter.

A tour of post-Cold War Russia given by a fictional character who operates as a Forrest Gump-ian Zelig with his hand in every aspect of the country’s multiple transformations, French auteur Oliver Assayas’ adaptation of Giuliano da Empoli’s 2022 novel boasts a solid turn by Jude Law as Vladimir Putin. It also affords astute insights into the nation’s character, charting its course from its 1990s flirtation with democracy to its present-day authoritarianism.

What it boasts in perceptiveness, however, it lacks in grace, as the film—screening at the Toronto International Film Festival—is a prototypical example of talking, ceaselessly