The Wizard of the Kremlin
Vertical | Release Date: May 15, 2026 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
56
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 33 Critic Reviews
Positive:
11
Mixed:
20
Negative:
2

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
65
The AtlanticDavid SimsMay 22, 2026
After the slow plod of its first act—and particularly thanks to Law—the movie does arrive at something mesmerizing: a taciturn, but brutal, piece of political tragedy. Read full review
50
The RevealScott TobiasMay 15, 2026
There are some good lessons here about how a country can slip past oligarchy into full-on Orwellian autocracy, but Assayas cannot find the right packaging for it. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleMay 15, 2026
The problem, though, from its clichéd interview framing (Jeffrey Wright plays an American journalist visiting the retired Baranov at his estate) to the tediously narrated flashback structure, is that the movie never lives and breathes inside its stitched-together moments, preferring to be a relentless, country-hopping talkfest in which characters opine as if fully aware of the consequential era they’re in, fully ready to explain it. Read full review
55
The Travers TakePeter TraversMay 15, 2026
It’s Russian history for dummies, but a never better Jude Law paints a portrait of Putin as a young tyrant that rings thrillingly, scarily true, as does Paul Dano as the dangerous puppeteer who trains him. Read full review
30
Wall Street JournalKyle SmithMay 15, 2026
Considering the gravity of the subject, and its immense potential, “The Wizard of the Kremlin” is not just a letdown, but something more like an insult. The film will do less damage to Mr. Putin’s reputation than to those of Mr. Assayas, Mr. Law and Mr. Dano. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubMay 14, 2026
It doesn’t make for a very serious look at decades of history, but The Wizard Of The Kremlin isn’t attempting to nail down a Russian reality any more than it is trying to directly tie its observations to modern America. It’s in its observation of hyperreality in action, its bleak look at constructed chaos, that the film inevitably feels close to home. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleMay 14, 2026
The weakness of “The Wizard of the Kremlin,” aside from the fact that at 136 minutes it’s a little too long, is that it follows the less interesting character of Baranov. But this isn’t Dano’s fault. He can’t make this fictional fellow more interesting than Putin. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comGlenn KennyMay 14, 2026
The picture sometimes plays as an amalgam of Soderbergh’s “Che” and Scorsese’s “Goodfellas,” only—and this is the crucial point—with the volume turned down from 10, or 11 for that matter, to about 4. Read full review
40
The New YorkerRichard BrodyMay 14, 2026
The movie fails politically to make clear what democracy is up against, and it fails artistically to imagine the unimaginable and give voice to the unspeakable. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerMay 14, 2026
Even among all the fictions, audiences will find more truths about modern Russia than they’ll get from most news broadcasts. Read full review
80
The New York TimesAlissa WilkinsonMay 14, 2026
It’s a useful framework for understanding leaders around the world, and Baranov is the ideal cipher, someone who intimately understands how easily people’s minds are swayed and molded. Read full review
91
Original-CinJohn KirkMay 11, 2026
The Wizard of the Kremlin is one of those rare dramatized histories that seamlessly blends facts with fiction. Read full review
40
EmpireDan JolinMay 7, 2026
An occasionally interesting but over-stretched attempt to recount Putin’s rise to power, best appreciated for the few moments in which Jude Law appears. Read full review
60
The TelegraphRobbie CollinApr 28, 2026
It’s smart and watchable in a miniseries sort of way, and sets the current war in Ukraine in an instructive wider context – while Dano is ideally cast as the unreadable vizier serenely pulling strings behind the scenes. But it’s also overlong. Read full review
80
Radio TimesJames MottramApr 17, 2026
Assayas and his team have created an indelible portrait of contemporary Russia, “a prison the size of a country” as it's called, one that perhaps only an outsider could ever get away with. Read full review
60
The Irish TimesTara BradyApr 17, 2026
Mostly the film is a showcase for Jude Law’s increasingly impressive late-career metamorphosis. The actor, who has spent recent years successfully probing wounded masculinities (The Young Pope, Firebrand), brings a strikingly controlled energy to his portrayal of Vladimir Putin as a lofty and weaponised civil servant. Read full review
38
Slant MagazineEd GonzalezSep 16, 2025
Olivier Assayas’s knack for fostering insight through irony is nowhere to be found in the film. Read full review
40
The Daily BeastNick SchagerSep 10, 2025
A prototypical example of talking, ceaselessly and crudely, at the audience. Read full review
40
ColliderRoss BonaimeSep 7, 2025
For a story that should be brimming with intrigue, danger, and the horrors of inventing your own reality, The Wizard of the Kremlin is instead a bloated, tiring recitation of facts that doesn't know how to elevate its dark subject matter. Read full review
40
Screen RantGraeme GuttmannSep 7, 2025
Just when it feels like it's going to hit the gas, The Wizard of the Kremlin holds back, all the way up to its confounding, out-of-left-field ending that is both abrupt and fittingly bleak. Read full review
60
Time OutPhil de SemlyenSep 2, 2025
The performances are solid, with an excellent Jude Law all inscrutable psychopathy as a younger Vladimir Putin and Alicia Vikander the perfect embodiment of an amoral post-Soviet arrivista, and the chilly world-building works well enough, but there’s a missing ingredient – actual Russians. Read full review
42
The Film StageSavina PetkovaSep 1, 2025
The film’s whole narrative set-up reveals itself flimsy and unconvincing––it doesn’t take much to realize that a conversation between a political advisor and a political expert could never in a million years be so toothless and dull. Read full review
80
The TimesKevin MaherSep 1, 2025
The film bounds ambitiously through fifteen years of the Baranov-Putin alliance. Read full review
70
Screen DailyJonathan RomneySep 1, 2025
A screenplay dense with incident and ideological discussion is carried efficiently by fast-moving, sleek direction and sumptuous mise en scene that catches the tone of a changing society and its sudden explosion of capitalist excess. Yet it never quite comes to life as a character sketch. Read full review
60
The IndependentGeoffrey MacnabSep 1, 2025
In what could easily have been a banana skin of a role, Law is surprisingly sure-footed. The British star has clearly studied his subject closely. He captures the Russian president with metronomic precision – his mannerisms, his cunning, his smirks and scowls. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterJordan MintzerSep 1, 2025
Neither Baranov nor Putin — nor the many oligarchs, whether dead or alive — are the protagonists of The Wizard of the Kremlin, whose main character is ultimately Russia itself. In that sense, Assayas has crafted an ambitious chronicle that serves up plenty of compelling facts, but never turns them into the stuff of legend. Read full review
60
VarietyOwen GleibermanSep 1, 2025
Even as The Wizard of the Kremlin flirts with being a movie of ideas, it flits in and out of things. It rarely stays in one place long enough to let us suck in our breath at how Putin’s Russia heralded what may turn out to be the new autocratic world. Read full review
60
TheWrapSteve PondSep 1, 2025
The Wizard of the Kremlin is a loud, bold film that is held together by the quiet performance at its center. Read full review
100
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriSep 1, 2025
I found its thundering journey through several decades of recent Russian and world history revealing and (perhaps more importantly) enormously entertaining. And by utilizing Law’s charisma to approximate Putin’s anti-charisma, it gives us a villain who is chilling and believable. I can’t wait to see it again. Read full review
70
Next Best PictureCody DericksAug 31, 2025
Despite being overwritten in places, the screenplay is the real star of the show in The Wizard of the Kremlin. Full of astute observations and dryly humorous quips, it’s gratifying to listen to. Assayas’ film is catnip for followers of political machinations, even if more casual viewers may find it as unconquerable as Russia has proved to be over the centuries. Read full review
50
The PlaylistMarshall ShafferAug 31, 2025
Law’s take on the Russian leader feels both real and mysterious — two features that the film otherwise struggles to corral across its unwieldy runtime. Read full review
58
IndieWireRyan LattanzioAug 31, 2025
It’s not a thriller, it’s not really a comedy, and it’s unlikely to start a revolution despite a cruel jolt of a final shot. Read full review
40
The GuardianPeter BradshawAug 31, 2025
The Wizard of the Kremlin just feels pointless in its knowing cynicism, right up to the silly, unearned flourish of violence at the very end. Read full review
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