Review: The Apprentice

Image courtesy of Briarcliff Entertainment.

Ali Abbasi's controversial new film, "The Apprentice," is a surprisingly watchable and frequently unsettling origin story for America's worst person. The picture's title refers to the popular reality show in which Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan) was once the star, but in the context of this story it refers to Trump's mentor-friend relationship with the notorious lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong).

There are more than a few scenes here in which the groundwork is laid for the Trump who would later go on to become its 45th president and is currently seeking the role of its first fascist dictator, but mostly the picture is a well written and intriguing story about how a guy with few morals but a lot of bluster was able to rise to the top through the tutelage of an unscrupulous mentor.

As the film opens in the 1970s, Trump has just been admitted to the Manhattan billionaire's club and has taken a date to an exclusive lounge where he fawns over the wealthy and powerful people hanging out there. It's here that he meets Cohn, an unrepentant bigot and sleaze merchant who is proud of his ability to hob knob with Richard Nixon (he previously worked with Joseph McCarthy) and blackmail people.

Trump wants Cohn to represent his family after his father, Fred Trump (Martin Donovan), and he have been sued by the federal government for refusing to rent to Black people. Cohn decides to take the family on as a client but, more importantly, take Donald under his wing.

Cohn teaches him the three most important tricks of business: attack, attack, attack; reframe the truth as being only what you say and deny every accusation; and never admit defeat, but rather claim victory even when the truth shows otherwise. Sound familiar?

A viewer who dislikes Trump might believe it would be hard to spend two hours in his company - and while this is somewhat true, I still found "The Apprentice" to be compelling and watchable. The film is shot in the seedy 1970s style one might expect from a film set in that era and there's an ever present sense of menace during its entire running time. 

Stan gives a solid performance as Trump, looking somewhat like him and and sounding a little bit like the real estate tycoon, but certainly nailing his mannerisms. In many ways, Strong gives the most compelling performance as Cohn, a ruthless man who views those lower on the societal totem pole as weak and not deserving compassion, that is, until he contracts AIDS (Cohn was gay, although he denied it) and suddenly finds himself being viewed by Trump in the same manner.

Ali Abbasi's filmography has been one that never fails to surprise. His "Border" was a freakish film about a Danish border security guard, while "The Holy Spider" was a haunting true crime film about an Iranian serial killer that cracked my top 10 of 2022. "The Apprentice" feels more in line with Abbasi's second film in that both study sociopathic behavior that comes to be deemed as acceptable by society. 

While I wouldn't go as far as saying that "The Apprentice" does a great job of capturing the essence of what has made Trump such a prominent figure in American politics and culture, it's an often fascinating origin story about how a sociopath is given the tools through a mentor of equally questionable morals to conquer the world or, at least, smooth talk his way to the top. 

Yes, it was difficult to spend two hours in Trump's company - especially during the scene in which he rapes his first wife, Ivana (Maria Bakalova) - when we are inundated with his awfulness on an hourly basis thanks to our feckless media, but "The Apprentice" is a film that is a little more watchable than you might expect.