Film review: The Apprentice is a brutal essay on the rise of Donald Trump — from rich-kid to man-child
Sebastian Stan stars as Donald Trump in The Apprentice.
- The Apprentice
- ★★★★☆
- In cinemas
“I am not a crook,” declares Richard Nixon at the beginning of , and while the implication seems to be that Nixon and Donald Trump have more in common than their presidency of the United States, the iconic footage also serves to set the tone as the idealism of the 1960s gives way to the cynicism of the ’70s.
Determined to ‘bring back New York’, the young Donald Trump (played by Sebastian Stan) describes himself as a property developer working for his father’s company, although we first meet him doing the rounds of apartment buildings knocking on doors and collecting rent.
Once Trump meets the legendary lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), however, the gauche but ambitious child of privilege begins to morph into an altogether more ruthless man as he pursues money, power and women – all of them shorthand for winning – and especially the beautiful socialite Ivana (Maria Baklova).
A hard-nosed legal eagle of vanishingly few scruples, Roy Cohn tutors his new apprentice in his rules for success, the basis of which is to always attack and never concede defeat.
Written by Gabriel Sherman and directed by Ali Abbasi, The Apprentice can at times feel as if the story is buckling under the weight of all its foreshadowing, a frequently unsubtle chronicle of a presidency foretold.
Then again, it’s hard to see how it might have unfolded otherwise, given that Donald Trump has always credited his business acumen for his political success.
Besides, the nuance here is in the characterisations, with Sebastian Stan in superb form as the socially awkward Trump gradually outstrips his craving for his father’s validation and – paradoxically – grows increasingly compelling the more dead-eyed and emotionally armoured he becomes.
Meanwhile, Roy Cohn’s trajectory runs parallel to that of his former acolyte but in reverse: as Trump soars upwards into New York’s financial elite, Jeremy Strong manages to invest the tyrannical Cohn’s fall from grace with a poignancy that almost lends itself to compassion, as if Cohn were some third-rate Lear and Trump his serpent-toothed child.
A portrait that is at times unexpectedly flattering, and at other times portrays its subject as a brutal man-child, The Apprentice is compulsive viewing.
