What better time could there be than right now for a movie about Vladimir Putin? Especially one packed with the talents of Paul Dano, Alicia Vikander, and Jude Law. Unfortunately this fictionalised biopic, inspired by real life figures, doesn’t carry the weight it should. Like many adaptations, it’s failed to find its own voice distinct from its source material, and the result is a rather summarised and flat narrative that struggles to come to life on screen.

The fictional history arranges itself, like all good fictions, around real events, using genuine news clips and with some characters taken from real life, such as Borises Berezovsky and Yeltsin. The central, and entirely made-up protagonist is Paul Dano’s Vadim Baranov, an ordinary boy growing up under communism, who embraces new opportunities after the Wall comes down. At first an idealistic theatre maker, then a more cynical TV producer, Vadim lets himself be so moulded by the new Russia, a place of personal ambition where, “If you don’t grab power, power grabs you”, he’s eventually headhunted by the oligarch, Berezovsky, to help replace the ailing President Yeltsin with the current head of the FSB, someone they presume will be easy to control, Vladimir Putin. Of course, they greatly underestimate Putin, played by Jude Law, particularly his nostalgia for the old authoritarian ways.

A classic framing device is deployed: an American journalist sits and listens to Vadim tell him his life story. Why, we’re not sure. The entire narrative is then held together with voiceover and when we’re not hearing Vadim explaining to us what he was thinking and feeling at any particular time, the rest of the film is structured around conversations. Most of the scenes are therefore of a static nature, characters moving around rooms seemingly for want of anything else to do. Overall, there’s a general lack of dynamism and originality to the production.

The vast majority of the characters doing the much talking, and much manspreading, are white men, probably historically accurate but leading to a noticeable lack of diversity in the production; Alicia Vikander, in the main female role, is absent for half the film.

Dano is well cast as the slightly creepy, incredibly soft-spoken enigma that is Vadim. He’s a shape-shifting everyman doing everything to perfection no matter what barbarism is ultimately involved; not in it, like most people, for the money or the politics but because he has a natural talent for putting his finger on the zeitgeist and can’t seem to help himself. However, his simpering tone, perhaps an effort to be accent-less, does become grating before the full 152 minutes are up. He never seems to change; there are no Damascus Road moments. When, towards the end, Vadim expresses to Vikander’s Ksenia in his usual monotone that he might be having some regrets about his life choices, it’s hard to take him seriously.

Jude Law, usually associated with charm and attractiveness is an odd choice for Putin. He manages to look the part but fails to convince us that he’s the man, his English accent sounding like laziness.

The film is a conveniently simplified history of Russia’s move from communism to unregulated gangster capitalism; it’s an interesting precis of Putin’s career but if you’re really interested in modern Russia perhaps read the book behind the film.

In cinemas nationwide from Fri 17 Feb 2026