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The NEFARIOUS RUSSIANS return to discuss Wizard of the Kremlin, a new film about Putin’s rise to power, where Jude Law plays Putin. Yeah, Jude Law. While formally it’s a pretty bad film that feels like an illustrated wikipedia article, we were still surprised by it. Because, for a mainstream film, it offered a fairly honest and factual portrayal of the preconditions to Putin’s rise to power and why his reestablishment of the power vertical in Russia was popular. We didn’t expect much and it exceeded our (low) expectations on that front. This is maybe the first western film about the Soviets/ Russians that shows them not as caricatures but with a bit of humanity and respect. This feels like a seismic shift — Did Putin conquer Hollywood or does reality increasingly have a pro-Putin bias?