Olivier Assayas’s adaptation of Giuliano da Empoli’s novel has arrived to baffling hostility. It stumbles, yes, but the vitriol(english is my second language btw) feels overblown.
Jude Law walks a difficult tightrope as Putin, and mostly holds his balance. He disappears into the role at times, conveying the cold stillness of a man who has mastered power, but elsewhere the seams show, and you find yourself watching Jude Law being very serious. The performance is competent, occasionally compelling, rarely transformative.
Paul Dano does everything right within constraints that aren’t entirely his fault. The direction doesn’t give him room to breathe.
The accent work is a puzzling choice. Assayas cannot decide whether his cast should sound Russian, and the inconsistency pulls you out at the worst moments. Pick a lane: commit to accents across the board or abandon them.
The title card separations deserve mention. They look cheap, almost like presentation slides a strange own goal for a film this polished.
The “Wikipedia out loud” criticism misses the point. This is a film about the machinery of Russian political life, and information density is a feature, not a flaw. It kept me engaged throughout. The complaint that no characters are developed is equally off. They may not follow conventional arcs, but that is a mismatch of expectations, not a failure.
A warning for the misophonic: several scenes feature men eating loudly with their mouths full.
I know Assayas only from his “Paris, je t’aime” segment, so take my critism with grain of salt. But this film is more serious and watchable than its 2.8 Letterboxd average suggests. The Rating I gave it was partly corrective, but the film deserves meaningfully more than its current standing.