The Wizard of the Kremlin (2026) Vertical/Drama RT: 136 minutes Rated R (language, some sexual material, graphic nudity, violence, a grisly image) Director: Olivier Assayas Screenplay: Olivier Assayas and Emmanuel Carrere Music: N/A Cinematography: Yorick Le Saux Release date: May 15, 2026 (US) Cast: Paul Dano, Jude Law, Alicia Vikander, Will Keen, Tom Sturridge, Jeffrey Wright, Kaspars Kambala, Andris Keiss, Magne-Havard Brekke, Matthew Baunsgard, Dan Cade.
Rating: *
A few months back, Variety reported that filmmaker Quentin Tarantino referred to Paul Dano as “the weakest f***ing actor in SAG” during an interview on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast. He based this assessment on the actor’s performance opposite Daniel Day-Lewis in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2007 film There Will Be Blood. I might agree with QT if he was talking about Dano in the dull political drama The Wizard of the Kremlin. He’s just awful in it. Then again, so is the rest of the cast. But Dano leads the charge as a political spin doctor at the Kremlin circa the late 90s/early 00s.
I’ve seen some bad movies as part of AMC’s Screen Unseen series. The list includes Magazine Dreams, Bone Lake, The Mastermind, Hunting Matthew Nichols and now The Wizard of the Kremlin. I should have stayed home. Why didn’t I just stay home? Why did I find it necessary to subject myself to this limp handshake of a film? It’s like the Russian version of Seinfeld. It’s about NOTHING. It could have been about something if director Olivier Assayas (Clouds of Sils Maria) showed any interest at all in the subject. He doesn’t which makes me wonder why he even bothered to begin with. In turn, it makes me wonder why I even bothered. This is one of those rare times when I would have been better off not knowing what I was missing.
PLOT? WHAT PLOT? Like I said a few sentences back, The Wizard of the Kremlin is about nothing. By that, I mean nothing happens, nothing interesting anyway. Although it centers on Dano’s character, a fixer trying to sell a positive vision of post-Soviet Russia to the rest of the world, it starts with this author (Wright, American Fiction) arriving in Russia to write a biography of Vadim Baranov (that’s Dano). The now-retired political advisor invites the author to his country home where he proceeds to tell him his life story. He takes him through his college years and his time as a TV producer before he became one of the most important figures at the Kremlin. He’s the one responsible for the rise to power of a young politician by the name of Vladimir Putin. Maybe you’ve heard of him?
To give you an idea of how truly bad The Wizard of the Kremlin is, let me tell you about Putin as depicted in the film. He’s played by Brit actor Jude Law (The Talented Mr. Ripley). This is some serious miscasting. I felt like I was watching Law perform in an SNL sketch. He looks just enough like Putin to make it believable for a five-minute comedy bit. Then he opens his mouth. He sounds completely wrong. He doesn’t even try to do a Russian accent. I might have laughed if I wasn’t trying so hard to stay awake. The good news is Law isn’t on-screen all that much. He appears for approximately 30 of the film’s insufferable 136 minutes.
The Wizard of the Kremlin is basically a series of barely connected scenes showing Baranov kissing ass and cleaning up messes. There is no rhyme or reason to it. It’s a confusing mess that doesn’t even do the audience the courtesy of explaining what’s going on in the background. Did it ever occur to the makers that not everybody is an expert on recent Russian history? They keep things on general terms. Boris Yeltsin resigns, Putin takes over and becomes a dictator. It would have helped things greatly if it had gone into more detail about any and all of it. Is that NOT the purpose of Dano’s character, to allow us to see things through the prism of a character who was right there for all of it? Oh, did I mention his character is fictional? He is. He serves the same function as Danny De Vito’s made-up character in the 1992 biopic Hoffa.
The Wizard of the Kremlin also co-stars Alicia Vikander (Tomb Raider) as a woman named Ksenia. She’s a girl that Baranov meets at a wild college party. She’s his girlfriend for a while. She leaves him for somebody with more of a future. She comes back into his life years later and they get involved again. As near as I can figure, the only purpose the incredibly talented Swedish actress serves in the movie is being the only major female character. It’s such a waste. As long as the film isn’t completely factual, why not give her more to do than hang around and show how non-conformist she is?
The Wizard of the Kremlin is beyond sluggish. It moves at roughly the same pace as molasses going uphill in Siberia in winter. It’s as boring as an insurance seminar. The dull color scheme doesn’t help any. It’s no action and all talk. That’s all the characters really do here. They talk and talk and talk and talk. Worse, none of it is even remotely interesting. Somebody told me it’s supposed to be a satire, but I didn’t see anything to laugh at. Even so, it doesn’t say anything we don’t already know. Politics are ridiculous and so are the people in that line of work. So what else is new?
I left The Wizard of the Kremlin feeling both annoyed at having wasted my time and exhausted from forcing myself to not fall asleep. Ethically, I can’t do that as a critic. If I’m going to write a review, I have to see the whole thing no matter how unwatchable. It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make so the rest of you can dodge this bullet. There is literally nothing to see here. Keep moving to the next theater.
