By Matthew Moorcroft

Solid Recommendation

• Directed by Ali Abbasi
• Starring Sebastian Stan, Jeremy Strong, Maria Bakalova, Martin Donovan
• R

Honestly, in the wake of the 2024 US elections, The Apprentice is a film that seems more and more less like a warning or an omen and more like a solemn realization. You would think that a film about the most talked about man in the world wouldn’t be interesting, and to some extent there is some truth there. Donald Trump, as a figure, has been so dissected and discussed and deconstructed by both pop culture at large as well as political pundits and just the general public that a film about his rise to power ultimately would feel like just restarting a conversation that never really ended in the first place.

Thankfully, if you are going to do it, you might as well get Ali Abbasi to do it. Known for his trademark bleakness in how he decides to present his stories, The Apprentice is notably dour and depressing for a biopic, which makes sense as it’s subject is one that requires it. It’s a film that, in any other circumstance, would ring as a triumphant rise of an important man, but in this case is a sobering portrait of the truth of the American dream and what it actually promotes.

The other strength I feel this has is that it’s uninterested in the parts of Trump’s life that have been documented more recently, and instead has it’s eye more on him prior to his life in the public. This is a Trump who, while still scummy in how he treats his tenants and has a clear ambition in his eye, is still somewhat of a person with hopes, dreams, familial relations. Abbasi’s examination of the somewhat mundane nature of evil, while more impactful and horrifying in something like Holy Spider, gives The Apprentice this lingering feeling of ickiness throughout it that really never goes away. Not helping those matters are the dingy, 1:85:1 aspect ratio that feels like it came off of your TV screen in the 1970s after watching the latest in cable channel news. It’s not a visibly nasty film, but after watching it you feel like you need to take a shower.

Sebastian Stan had an unenviable task ahead of him, as a portrayal of Trump could have so easily fallen into a caricature. But Stan’s remarkable performance is less of a straight up impersonation and more of a embodiment; Stan avoids Trump’s traditional voice or more obvious mannerisms and instead hones on his physicality and inflections. It’s a grand turn for an actor who has been repeatedly unsung in Hollywood, and shows Stan as a pretty remarkable character actor first and foremost. Equal in strength here though is the always great Jeremy Strong as the always detestable Roy Cohn, who has to portray Cohn with the right amount of malice while also making sure by the end he becomes almost pitiable at the expense of the monster he has created. Strong taps into some of his last Succession energy here in a lot of ways, and his facial acting is so good that you sometimes forget that you are watching Strong and instead only see Cohn in the key moments.

And while it’s bleakness, particularly in retrospect, is appreciated, it’s ultimately possible still not enough? If there is any big failing of The Apprentice is that it’s ultimately got nothing new to particularly say on the matter outside of how we got here. And outside of a really visceral and sudden sexual assault scene, Trump’s nastiness as a people mostly comes down to the actions he takes off screen which is effective at points but could have been more. Everything involving his family is great in that regard – particularly the death of his brother which is portrayed as a real “hardening of the heart” moment where he steels himself off from emotions. But ultimately the film is also concerned in trying to be a standard “rags to riches” biopic in it’s structure, and thus tends to more often then not fall into convention.

But I think it will definitely work for some people, and that’s totally fine. The Apprentice, as a piece about Trump, is certainly one of the stronger ones out there, and it’s a refreshingly honest piece of anti-fascism art that will likely be more important in future generations to see just how the hell we got to this point in the US. After all, when you have somebody like Donald Trump being able to flourish without much in the way of a slap on the wrist, what is the worth of a country?