Moving back and forward in time with the energy of a spy thriller, we see how the Putin we know today was shaped on the hard-scrabble streets of Leningrad (now St Petersburg). The film tracks how he escapes poverty by joining the KGB, how he models himself on the Russian James Bond, his reinvention as a political fixer in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union and how he gets into position to take over from the ailing President Yeltsin.
