I know this post is a year old, but I feel it important to say that Yurovsky, while made twenty-five years older than he really was, was not portrayed as a "kindly old grandfather figure" in the move. It's true that he welcomes them in, and is conflicted as to whether or not he should allow the family to read their mail before they are killed, but nonetheless when the representative of the Ural Soviet arrives at the Ipatiev house to tell Yurovsky that it is still debating whether or not the whole family should be killed, we can clearly see that he is angered by this hold-up. His bloodthirsty attitude is emphasized when he is finally sent the order to execute the whole family by saying "I could have told you that."
I don't view him as benign person in any way, in either reality or the movie.