The Wizard of the Kremlin (15, 152min)
Verdict: Absorbing political drama
Glenrothan
Verdict: A porridge of clichés
Judas Law Playing warlike, blood-soaked tyrants wasn’t always an obvious choice. But he made a convincing Henry VIII in the 2023 drama Firebrand and now he stars in the compelling political thriller The Wizard Of The Kremlin as Vladimir. Putinless arthritic than Henry, and less likely to execute women, but no less monstrous.
Adapted by French director Olivier Assayas from a novel of the same name, The Wizard of the Kremlin is a compelling account of how political power evolved in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and how it all ended up in the hands of a former KGB agent from St. Petersburg.
The story is told from the perspective of a lightly fictional character named Vadim Baranov (Paul Dano), who is reportedly based on Putin’s real-life spin doctor Vladislav Surkov.
We meet Baranov through the useful if hackneyed device of a visiting American journalist, played by Jeffrey Wright.
Baranov invites the American to visit his handsome dacha, where the conversation turns to his life and career, depicted in a series of extended flashbacks.
In 2020, I had the privilege of being on the jury of the Moscow Film Festival, before Putin gave his country international pariah status by invading Ukraine.
I was given an interpreter, a nice guy in his thirties who told me that as much as he and his friends had rejoiced at the end of communism, it had shocked his parents’ generation, whose ironclad social, cultural and political certainties evaporated almost overnight.
The Wizard of the Kremlin makes the same observation. Baranov explains that his father, who headed a Soviet cultural institute, knew his days were numbered when he saw Mikhail Gorbachev being handed a glass of milk during a live televised speech.
Jude Law plays Russian President Vladimir Putin in the political thriller The Wizard of the Kremlin
The story is told from the perspective of a lightly fictional character named Vadim Baranov, played by Paul Dano, right
Milk, not vodka. It was, as his father saw it, a metaphor for the de-Russification of Russia.
But for Baranov, a new Russia means new opportunities. He becomes a theater director and then a television producer.
At a decadent party he is seduced by a smart and beautiful singer, played by Alicia Vikander.
They are soon lovers, until she is lured away by his charismatic friend Dmitry (Tom Sturridge), who knows how to handle a batch of cognac that won’t sell for $50 a bottle; he raises the price to $500 a bottle and a stampede ensues.
That’s how the oligarchs get rich: through greed, folly and exhibitionism. But what really counts in Russia, unlike the West, is not money, but ‘proximity to power’.
Baranov befriends another oligarch, Boris Berezovsky (Will Keen), who takes him to meet an ex-KGB man, who is now a rising politician. “He’s a humble man, you’ll like him,” he says.
It’s our introduction to Putin, played beautifully by Law, with his South London vowels intact.
The president, Boris Yeltsin, is ill, so Berezovsky and Baranov persuade Putin to enter the Kremlin on his own. “He’s not a rocket scientist, but he’ll do just fine for now,” Berezovsky notes of Putin, a misjudgment that is not only regrettable but fatal.
In 2013, the exiled Berezovsky is found dead in his home near Ascot. An open verdict is recorded.
As his power increases, Putin becomes known as the Tsar and Baranov as the “New Rasputin,” wielding the same kind of influence as the old Rasputin.
We see how, with the soft-spoken Baranov at his side, Putin’s global vision is colored by what he sees as post-Soviet ‘humiliation’.
Returning from a G20 summit, he rages that he was treated as if he were the leader of an “insignificant” country like Finland.
Assayas cleverly presents all this not as a mix of recent history and informed assumptions, but as a lively thriller. It makes sense to remember that. After all, none of us should get our geopolitical education from movies.
But if The Wizard Of The Kremlin doesn’t give you a clearer insight into why Putin sent his tanks to Ukraine in 2022, it hasn’t done its job.
The job of Glenrothan, the directorial debut of the mighty Brian Cox, is to entertain and, I think, gently tug at the heartstrings, especially of anyone who feels sentimental about Scotland.
Brian Cox plays Sandy Nairn, owner of a century-old family distillery, whose estranged brother Donal, played by Alan Cumming, returns to Scotland after decades in Chicago
Alas, it’s little more than a mush of clichés, with virtually every strained attempt at heathland charm and highland whimsy landing as heavily as a tossed caber.
Cox plays Sandy Nairn, owner of a century-old family distillery, whose estranged brother Donal (Alan Cumming) returns to the old country after decades in Chicago, where he runs a blues club with his daughter (Alexandra Shipp).
David Ashton’s limp screenplay tries to weave together the company’s uncertain future and the brothers’ fractured relationship, with clumsy flashbacks to their youth and Shirley Henderson as the passionate distillery manager who, like everyone for miles around, thinks Donal is a real eejit… as evidenced by ‘you’re a real eejit, Donal Nairn’.
Cox and Henderson do their best with the lackluster material, but Cumming forgets to express his emotions and chooses to signal them instead. His woefully hammy performance sums up the whole picture.
The ancient Egyptian curse is a perverse delight
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy (18, 133min)
Boy, does this movie have mummy problems? And not just the mummified monster from the title, but also mothers.
The Mummy by Lee Cronin (18, 133 mins.) opens with an Egyptian father and his three charming children singing along to the radio in their car… until Mom grumpily tells them to shut up.
She has a headache. Although she actually has a lot more on her mind.
This mother (played by Hayat Kamille) is actually a kind of witch. And her job is to keep an ancient curse at bay.
Enter another family: an American family in Cairo – and their young daughter Katie (Natalie Grace).
She is soon kidnapped by the witch woman and has created the ship for an ancient horror majig. And that’s not even the worst of her excruciating ordeal.
Director Cronin made a name for himself with some particularly gruesome horror films, such as 2023’s Evil Dead Rise. This tops them all.
The mummy delights in making us expect something terrible – and then showing us something a hundred times worse. Let’s just say you’ll never look at toenails the same way again.
Which is perversely wonderful. When I watched this with a crowd, everyone cringed, screamed and – yes – laughed at all the right moments.
It is supported by wonderful performances from Grace as Katie, Laia Costa as her mother and Veronica Falcón as her grandmother. Until it all becomes a bit too much.
The ending feels a bit like The Exorcist, if The Exorcist was one of the crazier Marvel films. Oh, Mom!
