THE APPRENTICE (2024)

We first meet Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan) at the start of his career in the 1970s. He spends his days collecting rent from his predominantly lower-class African American tenants in his run-down New York apartment block and begging his parents for a bigger role in the family property empire.

But the glorified rent collector always had ambition, or delusions of grandeur. In a seedy Manhattan members’ club, in which Trump boasts about being the youngest ever member, he encounters Roy Cohn (Succession’s Jeremy Strong). This pitiless lawyer was well known for amassing dirty secrets and doing anything to win a case, no matter how amoral. Cohn is the more interesting thread to the film, perhaps because he’s lesser known.

Donald hires Cohn to defend his family in a legal case they have no hope of winning. He declines payments, The Trumps’ low-grade business not lucrative to hire the lawyer. Instead, Roy suggests he and Donald look out for each other’s interests. During the process, Roy imparts his wisdom onto the younger, more impressionable man. These rules, which Trump later repeats when pitching his book Art of the Deal, include: admit nothing and deny everything, claim victory and never admit defeat, and when in doubt, attack.

The Apprentice is held up by two of the year’s best performances. Stan’s Trump starts the movie charming and handsome, a world away from the 2024 Donald. As the film evolves, spanning over a decade of his life, he slowly evolves into the man currently on our TV screens. The mannerisms and speech patterns evolve as we follow Donald throughout the years. Although clearly being Donald Trump, Stan’s performance is never a parody. Despite the low budget, the makeup and prosthetic time effectively transform the Marvel Studios actor into a fatter, ageing, balding man. Whether we needed a film about Donald Trump is arguable, but The Apprentice is a worthwhile watch if not just for Stan and Strong.

Roy Cohn is a more mysterious figure to modern audiences. He was well known in New York high society and for being Joseph McCarthy’s lap dog during the Red Scare. A homosexual who suffered from AIDS, the openly homophobic future was immortalised in Angels in America. Strong is extraordinary as the diabolical character who gets played by Trump. He believes his Faustian deal is to his benefit but soon learns that he trusted the wrong person. The slow realisation that he has made a mistake flashes before his hollowed eyes. Jeremy Strong is the type of actor who can do a lot with just one ghostly stare. He also plays the physicality of a dying Roy, who, until his dying day, denied having AIDS and claimed to have liver cancer.

Maria Bakalova (Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm) plays Donald’s first wife Ivana as more than the trophy wife the media portrayed her until her death in 2022. The Bulgarian actress is slightly underused but nails the limited screen time she’s given. The controversial and much-publicised sexual assault scene between Ivana and Donald adds nothing to the plot and feels like a violent turn in an otherwise light film. The scenes which depict Trump’s gruesome plastic surgeries also add nothing but an unnecessary queasiness to a movie which mostly takes place at New York galas and legal offices.

The Apprentice looks great. It smartly uses lighting and camera techniques to recreate the opulent era of New York’s excesses. It opens in a grimy 16mm before pivoting to a stylized analogue look for the 1980s era of decadence. At times, it feels like you are watching home videos from the time period, with weathered edges and out-of-focus shots.

The film is unexpectedly apolitical. Director Ali Abbasi (Holy Spider) isn’t interested in Donald Trump’s politics and presidential ambitions; instead, he strips him to his essence. Presented like a villain origin story, The Apprentice depicts how the choices you make early in life and the people you meet can have effects many years later. Perhaps too many tiny references to MAGA play out like comic book Easter eggs rather than quotes from huge political events from US history.

The Apprentice could so easily be a political attack or a puff piece, but it manages to be neither. Fans of Trump may watch the film and see an ambitious man who played the American Dream and won. Critics will likely see the origin story of a morally corrupt, ego-centric man who used and abused those around him to gain power and fortune. The apolitical nature of the writing disconnects Trump from many of his actions, almost making him seem like a poor bystander in his own life and a man who just happened to get caught up with the wrong people.

By not choosing a specific viewpoint, the movie lacks bite and direction, with nothing new to say about a man who has dominated headlines for decades. It is unlikely that anything new will be added to the life of the former reality TV star, nor will it swing anyone’s opinions on the polarizing character. Instead, The Apprentice dashes through his early career and the building of Trump Towers, slightly touching on his marriage to Ivana and his troubled brother’s life and death. Part biopic, part comedy, and part horror movie.

Although the characters are all written with a multi-layered nuance, there’s too much to say about them. These performances deserve a better screenplay, with American journalist Gabriel Sherman’s writing never managing to explore the psyche of these real-life figures deeply. Strong, Stan, and Bakalova could have easily sunk their teeth into funnier, darker and bolder writing than The Apprentice ultimately delivers.

The Apprentice might have been more revolutionary if it concentrated more on Donald Trump as a human rather than a businessman who became involved in politics. The script is underdeveloped, struggling, like many biopics, to cover a decade of a man’s life and career in less than 120 minutes. Despite strong performances, the film’s lack of point of view and apolitical tone make it feel a little aimless.

CANADA • DENMARK • IRELAND | 2024 | 123 MINUTES | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

director: Ali Abbasi.
writer: Gabriel Sherman.
starring: Sebastian Stan, Jeremy Strong, Maria Bakalova & Martin Donovan.