Sebastian Stan plays Donald Trump in Ali Abbasi’s wickedly entertaining and ambitious villain origin story. Here’s our The Apprentice review.
Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice was always going to be controversial. Tracking the early years of Donald Trump – long before he was President Donald Trump – it’s impossible not to view the film through the lens of the 2024 election in the US. The Apprentice is a pretty damning look at Trump and his mentality, but Abbasi is also asking an awful lot of his audience; you’ll need to immerse yourself into Trump’s daily life for 120 minutes and it’s not always pleasant.
The action starts at the tail end of the 1970s. Sebastian Stan’s Trump has a lot of ambitious ideas, but he’s helplessly under his father’s command. After a chance encounter, the infamous Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) takes Trump under his wing. Cohn is everything Trump wants to be; powerful, invincible, confident. Under Cohn’s guidance, Trump begins to find his way in business, but it comes at a cost.
Ultimately, The Apprentice isn’t so much a biopic, but a creation story. Cohn begins to mould Trump to his image, but eventually finds that he has created a monster. Abbasi skillfully toes the line between asking for the audience’s forgiveness and sympathy for Cohn, a known arsehole, and simply showcasing the consequences of his actions as his health deteriorates. What goes around, comes around as they say.
The real measuring stick of The Apprentice is how it will play in 15 years. Right now, Trump is such a public, debated character that our reading of each scene is informed by how he has conducted himself in public in the last eight years. The film will offer very little to his supporters, but Abbasi is clearly fascinated by Trump and how he went from a mousy little loser to one of the most powerful men in the US.
It’s that fascination that carries most of the film and the cast fills in the rest of the gaps. Stan has become one of the more interesting actors working in Hollywood and he plays Trump with a villainous glee, especially in the film’s last third when his Frankenstein comes alive. Equally good is Jeremy Strong as Cohn. He turns the New York fixer into a Shakespearean villain and is clearly having a great time doing so.
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But it’s Maria Bakalova’s Ivana who provides us with the most clear look into Trump’s private persona. Their marriage begins as a romance for the ages, but quickly turns ugly as Stan’s Trump tells her he’s not attracted to her anymore, eventually assaulting her. A later scene finds Ivana trying to compose herself in the car before stepping out in front of adoring crowds and a sea of paparazzi, forced to put on a winning smile. The effect is sobering.
The Apprentice won’t appeal to all and it doesn’t necessarily tell us anything we didn’t already know about Trump. It’s an engrossing character study of a man who took the opportunity to become the worst possible version of himself.
The Apprentice is in UK cinemas 18th October.