As “The Last Station” would have it, Leo Tolstoy spent his final days struggling to master the perils of celebrity rather than the written word. Czarist Russia is shambling towards its doom (the film is set in 1910) and Tolstoy’s ideas on communal ownership of property—and even celibacy—have struck a resonant chord. People hang on his every word. Reporters furiously crank on their primitive motion-picture cameras whenever he steps out the front door of his country estate and sweaty young acolytes split wood at a commune down the road.

Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer) is eating this up. He knows his audience and plays to it, at once disclaiming and yet dressing the part of the intellectual saint with his long, scraggly beard and peasant smock.

But behind the scenes things aren’t going so smoothly. His unapologetically aristocratic wife, Sofya (Helen Mirren) is locked in a power struggle with his top aide, Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti). Chertkov is choreographing Tolstoy’s popularity into a social movement. His plan includes getting the writer to change his will and put the copyright of his works into the public domain as a gift to the Russian people. Sofya is not about to see the one source of financial security for herself and her children tossed away as political theater.

The great pleasure of “The Last Station” is watching Chertkov and Sofya have at each other. Giamatti and Mirren play their characters as shameless manipulators and dominate every scene they’re in. Plummer does a respectable job as Tolstoy but he doesn’t own the heart of the film. Director Michael Hoffman has created a domestic Armageddon and Plummer’s main contribution is his wince of pain as he’s reduced to a pull toy between Chertkov and Sofya.

“The Last Station” could stand to have Tolstoy himself be a more compelling character. There are moments—flashes really—where the script illuminates the psychic instability that occurs when an artist’s narcissism coalesces with public adoration. It is sad that they are so few. Plummer has one or two great opportunities to drive the film—there is a wonderful scene where Chertkov has dragged a writing desk and chair out into the middle of the forest so he can weedle Tolstoy into signing the new will without interference from Sofya—but Hoffman’s directing doesn’t back him up. Tolstoy needs to be a more voracious, dangerous character—imagine Norman Mailer in a Cossack shirt—to vivify the idea that he would callously damage his family to satisfy the appetites of his ego. The irony is that Mirren, with her ravenous love for her husband and icy loathing of Chertkov, would make a better Tolstoy than Plummer does.

In the end, Mirren and Giamatti grab the film’s energy leaving Plummer as more an object than a force.

As part of his battle plan against Sofya, Chertkov hires a young secretary for Tolstoy, Valentin Bulgakov (James McAvoy). Valentin is a star-struck follower of the great writer and isn’t prepared for the domestic free-for-all he’s about to enter. Chertkov wants him to spy on Sofya, and Sofya, not one to miss an opportunity, coaxes him to spy on Chertkov for her. Tolstoy, meanwhile, uses poor Valentin as a buffer between himself, Sofya and Chertkov.

Valentin has stumbled into the job from hell but he also manages to bump into Masha (Kerry Condon) a free-spirited member of the commune. Hoffman creates a sweet love story as a counter-point to the Passion play raging in the manor. It’s a very likeable part of “The Last Station” but small consolation in a film that wants for sharper teeth.