‘The Wizard of the Kremlin’ Review: Jude Law, as Vladimir Putin, and Paul Dano, as His Right-Hand Shadow, Give Ace Performances in What Is Basically a Glorified TV-Movie

I wish I could say that “The Wizard of the Kremlin” was a movie as gripping as Law’s Putin is himself, or one that exerts the total amoral fascination of Baranov’s postmodern totalitarian scheming. But the movie, directed by Olivier Assayas (from a script he co-wrote with Emmanuel Carrère), is at once absorbing and diffuse. It’s episodic to a fault, and despite these two ace performances it never finds a forceful dramatic center.