The Apprentice (2024)

Score: 4 / 5

With its title and unfortunately timely release, The Apprentice could easily have been a ham-fisted series of cheap shots at Donald Trump, designed to play off fears and fervor of the current political season. That it most certainly is not. However your mileage on its subject varies, and regardless of your mileage on him as a topic in general, the film presents a fascinating character study, insightful and incisive even as it bravely presents the unflattering truth of how the figurehead we hear and see came to be as he is. Now, it's a biopic, and that of a still-living person, so "truth" here is up for debate. After all, because of the culture around this man deciding to forsake things that are, in fact, true, it's ironic that his supporters are seeming to take issue with this film. But dramatizations are so rarely built around documented facts (they leave those to the documentaries to play around with) and rather built around fascinating characters doing silly or scary things. That's what makes it drama! Some might raise umbrage with a particular scene or two -- and if you've seen it, you know exactly which I'm talking about -- and while that may be a fair criticism, just try to tell me those scenes aren't the most gobsmacking in the film.

Writer Gabriel Sherman and director Ali Abassi present us with a view of the current rogue president and would-be autocrat while he's still learning how to be awful. The first half of the story takes place in the '70s, as a young Trump learns his infamous "art of the deal" while being effectively groomed by the patently evil urban lawyer Roy Cohn. The mentee is in awe of the brazen power wielded by Cohn's controversial braggadocio, lapping up every bit of chauvinistic cruelty he can at the hands of the master of self-delusion and internalized hatred. It's a riveting hour or so of potent ideas and a reminder of the man Trump once was, artificially building his career while bankrolled by his family and still sometimes trying to be charming. What else might account for Trump following Cohn (of all people) into the bathroom to butter him up and convince him to help him get that damned 42nd Street hotel built?

Sherman, ever the journalist, works hard to inject the proceedings with as many factual references as possible, though it does occasionally feel like a series of Easter eggs dropped for the history buffs among us. The approach carries a certain charm, especially for those of us who never gave a shit about "The Apprentice" and his grotesque business enterprises, because it provides cultural context in spades. The film's production design is almost gilded itself, but despite the tacky trappings around each character, Abbassi and team visually highlight the underbelly of rot beneath garish excess. 

Sebastian Stan plays the titular man with a reserved, even earnest, demeanor instantly recognizable to anyone who has been so insecure as to desperately fashion a new public persona to achieve some level of success. It's a risky move, especially for the protagonist of a modern biopic, yet even Trump's withdrawal often reads as overacting; this makes Stan's performance all the more riveting, as we track his avaricious pursuit of wealth and influence from seedy criminals to government officials. He's never wholly knowable, despite the film being about him, and while some may decry that as a failure of The Apprentice -- what is a biopic if not meant to lay bare its subject's internal life? -- I'd argue that this particular subject has no internal life, having sacrificed it in his Faustian bargain for fame and power.

And who is his Mephistopheles? None other than Cohn, played in a masterful, award-worthy performance by Jeremy Strong. Cohn, still riding his own infamy after the Rosenberg trial, is the amoral demon of recent American history, brought to life by a screenplay and actor who are determined to showcase the man in much more putrid light than even Tony Kushner managed in Angels in America. Small and sweaty, impeccably dressed, and aggressively bullying everyone around him, Cohn stalks around like a man eager to fight with anything but his fists. Even with his homosexual partner trailing behind him (and having a gay orgy stumbled upon by his protégé!), he has so effectively fictionalized his own identity that we immediately see the traits of Trump in this self-hating, relentlessly cruel pathological liar. It's even through Cohn that we first hear the shockingly evil rules of life and business that Trump lives by, rules he would eventually pass off as his own in his own The Art of the Deal. As a man eventually forced, in the film's second half, to reckon with the monster he is and the monster he created, Strong's performance is one for the ages.

These leading men are surrounded by a wonderful cast, though the other players aren't given much chance to do anything independent. And that's okay; the film works better through its limited focus. It's not a documentary, after all! Maria Bakalova notably shines in her handful of scenes as Ivana, cleverly undermining the image of a trophy wife so often associated with her in the '80s. Speaking of which, the second half of the film does indeed jump ahead in time to that decade, as Trump's marriage collapses, Cohn's health deteriorates, and the American climate burns with Reaganomics and capitalistic decadence. While the jump is more than a bit jarring, and doesn't fully make sense as a storytelling technique if the point is to better understand Trump's formative years, one might make the case that it's the natural conclusion for this particular story. Regardless, this is when the actors really showcase their talents beyond how they interpret a screenplay. Playing characters that change so dramatically in such a comparatively short time requires a lot of hard work from performers, and this cast nails it.

As a historical document, The Apprentice will leave you wanting more. But as a depiction of Trump, Cohn, and their roles in each other's life, it's a mercurial character drama that plays like an entertaining thriller. As such, its climactic scene, depicting Trump violently raping his wife, feels like torment that we both need and deserve to see; it can be easy to write off his cruelties as symptomatic of selling out to capitalism or amoral American "values," but to do so will leave viewers without reminders of why the man is so personally, deeply hateful. Though it's hard to watch, I'm glad the filmmakers included the scene, so that we can all remember that, regardless of his policies or politics in general, Trump is a sexual predator and is in fact guilty of violent crimes against women. Beyond that, I'm also glad the film treats Trump like a real human -- much as his depiction in The Comey Rule (2020) -- and not as any kind of caricature or parody, despite the constant SNL-like references to his external life littering the screenplay. Painting his life thus, as something more thrilling or horrific than melodramatic or soapy, is a dark reminder that the worst is indeed yet to come.