THE APPRENTICE
Good acting, a finely honed visual style and a timeless Faustian narrative are all assets to The Apprentice, but it would likely have been a better movie without the Donald Trump connection.
As evidenced by previous films like Border and Holy Spider, Danish-Iranian director Ali Abbasi is not one to shy away from controversy, so he is a natural fit for a movie that attempts to dissect how and why Donald Trump became DONALD TRUMP!!! (exclamations marks non-negotiable). Unfortunately the film doesn’t quite achieve what it sets out to do.
The Apprentice opens in the mid-seventies, as a young Donald Trump attempts to renovate a derelict New York hotel while facing racism claims from the government. He seeks the assistance of seasoned lawyer Roy Cohn to help his cause and before long the outspoken Cohn, with plenty of dirty tricks up his sleeve, becomes Trump’s mentor on the road to success.
While Sebastian Stan at times eerily channels Donald Trump’s mannerisms and an intense Jeremy Strong savours the inner evils of Roy Cohn, The Apprentice never feels like a film based on true events.
There is something too obvious, too easy about explaining Trump as someone in a long line of ambitious people with daddy issues making a Faustian deal with a powerful figure to prove their worth, and Abbasi handles the villain-apprentice dynamic with as much subtlety as George Lucas did when he portrayed Darth Vader’s corruption in the Star Wars prequels. A deep, thoughtful film, The Apprentice thus is not.
By limiting its scope to the decade between Nixon’s resignation and Reagan’s second term, the picture also sidesteps Trump’s transformation from a hardcore capitalist to an ideological opportunist, which further dilutes the film’s allure for a modern audience. So while the Trump angle is undoubtedly what got The Apprentice greenlit, it’s also what keeps it from becoming a better film.
release: 2024
director: Ali Abbasi
starring: Sebastian Stan, Jeremy Strong, Maria Bakalova, Martin Donovan
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