The Wizard of the Kremlin

The second movie in my double feature at the Broadway yesterday was The Wizard of the Kremlin.  I found it very intriguing because I love Russian history but also a bit of a slog to get through (can both things be true?).  An American academic named Lawrence Rowland (Jeffrey Wright) arrives in Moscow to research a Russian author when he is contacted by Vadim Baranov (Paul Dano) and invited to his isolated dacha to interview him about his former role as advisor to Vladimir Putin (Jude Law).  Barasov chronicles his rise from an avant-garde theatre director after the fall of communism to become the producer of trashy reality television shows during the surge in organized crime and then a media mogul as the new class of oligarchs manipulate the rule of Boris Yeltsin (George Sogis).  When the oligarchs realize that Yeltsin's health is declining, they handpick Putin, the balding and nondescript leader of the FSB, to be his successor because they think he will be easy to manage only to have him take control of the media away from them.  Baranov quickly becomes indispensable to Putin and helps him spin the Second Chechen War, the sinking of the Kursk submarine, and the invasion of the Crimea (the start of the war in Ukraine).  He also uses internet trolls and propaganda during the Sochi Winter Olympics to influence public opinion in the West.  However, it is his love for a woman named Ksenia (Alicia Vikander) that ultimately leads to his downfall.  Barasov is a fictionalized character (loosely based on Vladislav Surkov) who is at the fulcrum of Russian history from Gorbachev to Putin but the narrative is simultaneously bloated with too much information and superficial without providing any insight.  My mind wandered multiple times during the endless exposition dumps.  Even though Dano, Law, and Vikander give fascinating performances (their inconsistent accents notwithstanding), their characters are very thinly drawn and I didn't really learn anything new about Putin.  I recommend giving this a miss.

Note:  I think this might have worked better as a limited series.