They could have called the Donald Trump movie The Worst Person in the World. That title was taken, though, so The Apprentice will have to do. This supervillain origin story charts the rise of the USA’s 45th, and easily worst, president as notorious New York lawyer Roy Cohn takes a young real estate tycoon under his wing. Played with dramatic gusto by Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong as Trump and Cohn, respectively, this unholy alliance offers a fable about men with the insatiable hunger for power. It’s just too bad it doesn’t offer much new to say about either man.
Particularly with an election looming and more of Trump’s petty nonsense coming up the pipeline when he loses (again), The Apprentice could have gone harder. However, as political satires goes, it’s meatier and has more finesse than, say, Oliver Stone’s pointless W. Trump obviously doesn’t want people to see the film, but it’s unlikely to change any votes. It might also be too much too soon for some audiences given that Trump still overwhelms daily news cycles. The Apprentice is about as much fun as watching a COVID-19 documentary during lockdown. But it’s the monster movie of the season for anyone willing to stomach it.
The film charts back to 1973 when Trump was building his empire in New York real estate. His family’s being sued for allegedly denying rentals to Black applicants. This racial discrimination case threatens Trump’s ambition to seize some plum real estate near Grand Central Station and develop a hotel. But he also expects massive tax breaks to be able to afford it at a time when NYC is in shambles. His city is dying, but Trump thinks the rules don’t apply to him.
What proves especially fascinating with this character study is its ability to make Trump the president that America deserved. But The Apprentice reminds audiences that the man who tried to run America like a business was never a particularly good businessman to begin with. Trump meets Cohn after leeching his way into a private club seeking legal advice. Trump can’t hold his liquor and drinks like a schoolgirl. Meanwhile, Cohn and company pound back straight vodka, making deals and titans after punching out the clock.
Cohn sees a worthy apprentice in the ambitious Donald. He teaches him key rules like “Attack, attack, attack” and to always claim victory no matter what. One choice sleazebag breeds another as Cohn grooms Trump to be a smooth-talking acolyte. He even does the work pro-bono and says that Trump’s friendship will repay him. But that proves a Shakespearean betrayal.
Particularly when prudish Donald pays Cohn an after-hours house call during one of his lawyer’s raging parties and stumbles upon Roy pounding away on a dude in a room with five other naked men that he reveals the unyielding extent of his cruelty. Trump also betrays his cultural ignorance when he meets an artist and is surprised to learn me makes a living. (It’s Andy Warhol.) Trump has one view of America and anyone, even the people who made him, have no place in it if they don’t fit his ideal.
However, once The Apprentice brings Ivana into the picture and Trump moves in like a playboy operator, refusing to take “no” for an answer, the film transitions into conventional biopic mode. The scenes with the first Mrs. Trump illustrate the Donald’s misogyny, but The Apprentice ultimately becomes more interested in Trump’s enterprise with Trump Tower than his politics. It’s a colossally vain monument to himself, but everyone already knows that 45 poops in a gold toilet.
The voters likeliest to be swayed by the film, however, hail from bodies casting ballots come awards time. Stan and Strong give bold interpretations of the lecherous tycoons. Borat’s Bakalova also delivers a winning supporting turn as Ivana.
Stan gets Trump’s mannerisms, speech patterns, and essence as a total shit down pat. It’s an impressive year for the actor with A Different Man showing off his range both dramatic and comedic. There’s something brilliantly awful about cracking a laugh while Stan’s Trump boorishly commands the frame. One sees as much Homer J. Simpson here as one does Donald J. Trump, although that observation may be a disservice to the affable Mr. Simpson. It’s a big swing to portray a former (and possibly future) president in such a fair yet unflattering light. Stan’s committed performance transcends impersonation as he creates a man fuelled, consumed, and corrupted by his “bigly” ambitions.
Make no mistake, though: The Apprentice is not Downfall. Stan, director Ali Abbasi (Holy Spider), and writer Gabriel Sherman don’t ask audiences to feel for Trump the way that Downfall invited empathy for Hitler. They understand that Trump doesn’t deserve it. It’s too much to ask for an audience that survived the last eight years to have sympathy or the devil. It’s a relatively restrained portrait of a total idiot.
Strong perhaps pulls off a trickier feat with Cohn. He has an unenviable task in the shadow of Al Pacino’s Herculean turn as Cohn in Angels in America. The Succession star takes Cohn down a peg from Pacino’s grandiose performance. This Cohn is an even-handed interpretation of legal shark who apprenticed under Joseph McCarthy, ferreted out homosexuals in an institutional witch hunt, and took pride in sending George and Ethel Rosenberg to the electric chair. Young Trump idolizes Cohn and wants to be a killer, just like him. That Strong makes Cohn borderline sympathetic by the end as his deadened might be The Apprentice’s finest evisceration of the American dream. Strong’s defeated expression foreshadows the coldness and cruelty that America would face from Cohn’s protégé. (Hindsight is always 20/20.)
The lo-fi video images chronicle how Trump fashioned a persona that everyone bought into. Stan leans into the comedic elements of this self-made character. The Apprentice feels increasingly parodic as Trump himself became self-parody. After Trump gets some liposuction and a hair transplant to improve his image—he tells a reporter that he doesn’t think exercise is good for a person, again positioning himself as an exception to reality as he scarfs down McDonald’s—Cohn returns to the picture. It’s late in his life and he’s dying of AIDS. Trump puts Cohn and his lover up in a hotel for old time’s sake, but proves a monster of Dr. Frankenstein’s creation when he sends his maker the invoice.
By the end of The Apprentice, Trump is still a sleazy landlord chasing down people to pay the rent. In short, the film’s an accurate portrayal even if it’s not a revelatory one.
