The Apprentice Review

Donald Trump is one of the most divisive public figures in the world with his early real estate career and his relationship with the controversial lawyer Roy Cohn serving as the subject of the biopic The Apprentice.

The year is 1973, Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan) is the son of real estate developer Fred Trump (Martin Donovan). The US Justice Development set out to indict the Trumps and their company for discriminating against African-American tenants. Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) offers to represent the Trumps and promises to get the charges dropped. Cohn sees potential in the young Trump and offers to mentor him as he starts his real estate empire.

Most people have made up their minds about Donald Trump, especially after he entered politics. People either love him or hate him and few are that are undecided on the man. If the goal of The Apprentice was to convince voters against Trump it’s bound to fail because views on Trump have been entrenched. Supporters will see the film as nothing more than liberal propaganda and people who are against Trump will believe the film’s just preaching to the choir. The North American box office numbers have shown a lack of interest.

This issue affects political films across the political spectrum. Oliver Stone’s biopic about George W. Bush was a commercial flop with a mixed critical reception. I was critical of Vice since it was more interested in political point scoring than being a character study about Dick Cheney. Whilst on the right, the Dennis Quaid-led biopic about Ronald Reagen was a critical and commercial flop, and documentaries by Dinesh D’Souza are filled with misinformation and only appeal to the Tea Party/MAGA crowd.

The Apprentice had an air of prestige to it. It had a talented cast, featuring Sebastian Stan, Jeremy Strong, and Oscar-nominee Maria Bakalova, directed by Abi Abbasi who has a filmography of critically acclaimed films and TV episodes, and written by Gabriel Sherman, a journalist known for exposing Roger Ailes for sexual harassing Fox News employees, including presenters like Megyn Kelly and Gretchen Carlson. It was nominated for the Palme d’Or at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. The Apprentice has much better acting and directing than right-leaning films.

The Apprentice did have terrific acting, especially from Stan and Strong. Jeremy Strong has a good chance of earning a lot of best supporting awards nominations and Stan shouldn’t be written off. Strong was incredible as a horrific and cruel individual who was blatantly racist and sexist and said all liberals are socialists. Despite Cohn being such a repulsive figure, he became slightly sympathetic in the second half. Stan’s Trump had the mannerisms that people have come to know, like his showboating, bluster, and aggression. He morphed into the figure everyone had come to know. Stan’s Trump was loathsome to start with and became worst as the film progressed.

The Apprentice was made with a modern mindset. There were references to the man Trump became and not the Trump of the 1970s and ‘80s. Trump entered into a feud with Ed Koch (Ian D. Clark), leading Trump to publicly insult his opponent, Trump was asked several times if he would run for president and he said that most politicians were losers who didn’t know anything. This was when The Apprentice was at its most annoying since it was nodding and winking to the audience and saying ‘look at all these clever references.’

The Apprentice was a film of two halves. The first half was focused on the ‘70s, showing how Cohn gave Trump his important lessons in life and business, whilst the ’80s showed Trump as the flashy real estate mogul who cultivates an image of success. This was a film that showed a drastic change in New York, where it was a bankrupt, crime-ridden hellhole in the ‘70s, whilst in the ‘80s it was booming because of Reaganomics, which benefited Trump. Most importantly it was about the rise and fall of Trump and Cohn’s friendship. Like many people who associated themselves with Trump, Cohn got screwed over.

This two-act structure is a tried and tested formula, which made The Apprentice feel like a Martin Scorsese film since it was used in films like Goodfellas, Casino, and The Wolf of Wall Street because they were all ‘rise and fall’ stories. Abbasi made the film look dark and gritty in the first half, making it feel like Taxi Driver, and the second half turned into Wolf of Street as it focused on corporate and personal excess.

The Apprentice aimed to show many of Trump’s controversies from this period. Trump had his start in business by working as a slum landlord for his father, when his empire grew Trump planned to move to Atlantic City and open two mega casinos, a move that Cohn advised against and Trump’s attempt to take advantage of his father’s cognitive decline. Trump’s actions were seen as so reprehensible that even his supporter, his mother turned against him.

The Apprentice was a well-crafted film with top-notch acting, which makes it a cut above many politically driven biopics. It wasn’t speculative as W. and Vice but due to the subject matter and how irredeemable Trump was portrayed, it will ensure The Apprentice’s appeal will be limited.