{"id":14416,"date":"2026-05-06T14:08:27","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T18:08:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=14416"},"modified":"2026-05-30T16:53:43","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T20:53:43","slug":"the-wizard-of-the-kremlin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2026\/05\/06\/the-wizard-of-the-kremlin\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wizard of the Kremlin"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Wizard of the Kremlin<\/strong> (2026)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Vertical\/Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 136 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, some sexual material, graphic nudity, violence, a grisly image)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Olivier Assayas\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Olivier Assayas and Emmanuel Carrere\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: N\/A\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Yorick Le Saux\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: May 15, 2026 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Paul Dano, Jude Law, Alicia Vikander, Will Keen, Tom Sturridge, Jeffrey Wright, Kaspars Kambala, Andris Keiss, Magne-Havard Brekke, Matthew Baunsgard, Dan Cade.<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: *<\/p>\n

\u00a0A few months back, Variety reported that filmmaker Quentin Tarantino referred to Paul Dano as \u201cthe weakest f***ing actor in SAG\u201d during an interview on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast. He based this assessment on the actor\u2019s performance opposite Daniel Day-Lewis in Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s 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<\/strong>. He\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019ve seen some bad movies as part of AMC\u2019s Screen Unseen series. The list includes Magazine Dreams, Bone Lake, The Mastermind, Hunting Matthew Nichols and now The Wizard of the Kremlin<\/strong>. I should have stayed home. Why didn\u2019t I just stay home? Why did I find it necessary to subject myself to this limp handshake of a film? It\u2019s like the Russian version of Seinfeld. It\u2019s 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0PLOT? WHAT PLOT? Like I said a few sentences back, The Wizard of the Kremlin<\/strong> is about nothing. By that, I mean nothing happens, nothing interesting anyway. Although it centers on Dano\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s the one responsible for the rise to power of a young politician by the name of Vladimir Putin. Maybe you\u2019ve heard of him?<\/p>\n

\u00a0To give you an idea of how truly bad The Wizard of the Kremlin<\/strong> is, let me tell you about Putin as depicted in the film. He\u2019s 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\u2019t even try to do a Russian accent. I might have laughed if I wasn\u2019t trying so hard to stay awake. The good news is Law isn\u2019t on-screen all that much. He appears for approximately 30 of the film\u2019s insufferable 136 minutes.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The Wizard of the Kremlin<\/strong> 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\u2019s a confusing mess that doesn\u2019t even do the audience the courtesy of explaining what\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s made-up character in the 1992 biopic Hoffa.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The Wizard of the Kremlin<\/strong> also co-stars Alicia Vikander (Tomb Raider) as a woman named Ksenia. She\u2019s a girl that Baranov meets at a wild college party. She\u2019s 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\u2019s such a waste. As long as the film isn\u2019t completely factual, why not give her more to do than hang around and show how non-conformist she is?<\/p>\n

\u00a0The Wizard of the Kremlin<\/strong> is beyond sluggish. It moves at roughly the same pace as molasses going uphill in Siberia in winter. It\u2019s as boring as an insurance seminar. The dull color scheme doesn\u2019t help any. It\u2019s no action and all talk. That\u2019s 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\u2019s supposed to be a satire, but I didn\u2019t see anything to laugh at. Even so, it doesn\u2019t say anything we don\u2019t already know. Politics are ridiculous and so are the people in that line of work. So what else is new?<\/p>\n

\u00a0I left The Wizard of the Kremlin<\/strong> feeling both annoyed at having wasted my time and exhausted from forcing myself to not fall asleep. Ethically, I can\u2019t do that as a critic. If I\u2019m going to write a review, I have to see the whole thing no matter how unwatchable. It\u2019s a sacrifice I\u2019m 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.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Wizard of the Kremlin (2026)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Vertical\/Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 136 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, some sexual material, graphic nudity, violence, a grisly image)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Olivier Assayas\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Olivier Assayas and Emmanuel Carrere\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: N\/A\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Yorick Le Saux\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: May 15, 2026 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Paul Dano, Jude Law, Alicia Vikander, Will Keen, Tom Sturridge, Jeffrey […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14418,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dramas"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/The-Wizard-of-the-Kremlin-P.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14416"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14419,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14416\/revisions\/14419"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}