One approaches the release of Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice with equal parts morbid curiosity and dread. Mired in what was almost certainly expected controversy since its premiere at this past spring’s Cannes Film Festival — including toothless threats of lawsuits, a lukewarm reception from skittish distributors, and even one of its financiers pulling out of the film after it had been completed because it wasn’t a “flattering portrayal” — The Apprentice is colloquially known as “the Donald Trump movie,” although it would be more accurate to describe it as a two-hander between Trump and one-time mentor and scourge of the 20th century, Roy Cohn. In a sense, the film aspires to be a supervillain origin story, not unlike Joker; we’re meant to understand how a cartoonish agent of chaos with an affinity for makeup and garish clothing lifted himself from the ashes of failure and thrust himself into the national spotlight (perhaps not coincidentally, both films are set primarily against the urban decay of the early ’80s). But after being a public figure for nearly 50 years — not to mention being regrettably inescapable every day of the last decade — and being the subject of hundreds of books, thousands of cable news hits, and roughly a billion late-night talk show jokes/SNL sketches/political podcasts, what possible new insight can be gleaned about Trump in a lightly fictionalized setting, particularly as one of his most well-defined traits is his complete lack of introspection.
Abbasi, working from a screenplay by journalist Gabriel Sherman, at least has a novel theory on “what made Trump into Trump,” and, to his credit, it sustains the film for a shockingly long period of time. The first half of The Apprentice narrowly focuses on the once, and God help us potentially future, president of the United States (Sebatian Stan, under the famed golden bird’s nest) as a slouching, failson in his 30s, still collecting the rent for his slumlord/land developer father Fred (Martin Donovan, behind a push broom mustache). Initially presented as a soft-spoken dreamer and relentless social climber — Trump is shown early on boring a date at an exclusive member’s only club about the varied titans of industry also in the room — Donald wants to be wealthy, yes, but is mostly desperate to prove his value to his emotionally withholding dad. Trump’s life changes (and with it the course of world events) when he’s summoned from across the room by the pugnacious yet obsequious Cohn (a shark-like Jeremy Strong) to join his table. It’s the late ’70s and Cohn is still a feared national figure, having been a hatchet man for both McCarthy and Nixon who lately pals around with all the mafiosos he’s shielded from persecution, whereas Donald is still just “Freddy’s kid.” There’s something almost predatory in Cohn’s early interactions with Trump, plying the avowed teetotaler with alcohol, rubbing his face and calling him “beautiful,” before speculating aloud: “I’ll bet you fuck a lot.” But if Cohn initially views Trump merely as a potential sexual conquest, he quickly identifies other talents and pours his energy into reshaping the young man in his own image.
Such begins Cohn’s tutelage of his wet-behind-the-ears yet eager student (the film’s title is a play on Trump’s long running reality TV show, but it’s also meant to be taken literally here). Cohn sees in Trump a near-empty vessel; filled with filial resentment, ruthless ambition, and little else (including pesky stuff like scruples or shame) to get in the way. The trial attorney agrees to take on the Trump organization’s anti-discrimination lawsuit — the federal government has the Trumps dead to rights for denying housing to Black applicants, although as Donald protests, that’s not true as 10% of their tenants are people of color… they simply need to earn four times the monthly rent in order to get approved — and along the way coaches Donald on his philosophy for life (in short: always be the aggressor, admit nothing while denying everything, and, most importantly, no matter what the outcome is, always claim victory), as well as his use of dirty tricks including extortion and illegal wiretaps. Having skated on any actual consequences from the government — the film claims Cohn blackmailed a Justice Department official to sandbag the case with photos depicting homosexual dalliances — Trump is free to pursue his true passion: the renovation and gentrification of a 42nd Street property that would go onto become the Hyatt Grand Central New York. Yet for all of his newfound swagger, Trump is still fundamentally lost at sea without his mentor there to grease the rails, requiring Cohn to strong-arm the mayor’s office and other local government to grant a $100,000,000 tax abatement so that construction can begin (fun fact: it was reported in 2020 that that abatement which was in place for 40 years had cost the city of New York more than $400 million in lost revenue).
It should be noted that there is no shortage of dramatizations about Cohn, the most heralded of which is Al Pacino’s performance in Mike Nichols adaptation of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America (there was also a well-regarded HBO movie from the early ’90s starring James Woods as Cohn), and yet he remains a somewhat forgotten figure and a chilling reminder that when we allow our monsters to expire into anonymity, they’re destined to be replaced by worse ones. Cohn was a cheerleader for HUAC and “the blacklist” while personally taking credit for the Rosenbergs being sent to the electric chair, and his dualities and contradictions have been well-documented. A closeted homosexual who targeted other gay men and a Jew who trafficked in antisemitism, Cohn justified his attack-dog tactics with an unwavering if misplaced love of country — in the film Cohn addresses his guests at a party as the only thing standing in the way of America becoming an “authoritarian hellscape,” which is the sort of thing that would feel right at home on Fox News’ primetime programming. All of which is to say that Cohn, ghoul and hypocrite though he might have been, was guided by a higher calling, and Strong’s performance locks in on that self-governance and those distorted principles. The actor lends shading to a man beyond kindness, making Cohn if not sympathetic, than certainly understandable in his deviousness. The actor repeatedly allows the mask to slide down so that he can honestly assess the fraudulence of a situation before tenaciously barrelling forward in furtherance of a lie. Cohn possesses a level of self-awareness that will allow him to justify his actions, reprehensible though they may be, if they’re in service of his vision for the United States (Strong’s performance serves as a mirror for the self-rationalization of the modern Republican party as well as the belated realization that loyalty and service to Trump frequently goes unrewarded).
The problem, however, is there is no honest way of portraying Trump without coming across as either an insecure dullard or sucking wound of resentment and incuriosity. Though many have tried to find some inner light or tragedy in the man, there’s nothing to solve here any more than there is in, say, an alligator that eats a small dog (Why did it do it? Because it was hungry and the dog was there). As The Apprentice progresses and Cohn’s prominence recedes with the now 40-something Trump growing into himself (which isn’t strictly a reference to his weight gain, although the film does offer an amusing explanation for Donald’s love of baggy suits after Roy notes at a fitting: “you’ve got kind of a big ass”), Stan fully embraces the cultivated caricature that is “Trump.” His halting cadence and boyish deference to his elders now replaced by bluster — the film indicates Trump’s logorrhea is a result of popping cheap amphetamines to try and stay thin — and boastfulness as The Apprentice goes through the motions of events that have largely played out in public and in front of the cameras: Trump’s tempestuous romance with Ivana (Maria Bakalova), stiffing creditors, trying to cut his siblings out of their inheritance, his doomed venture into Atlantic City casinos, and so on. Stan’s performance, while technically precise in his mannerisms and delivery — he’s not really attempting the voice, which prevents him from falling into mere impersonation — is ultimately constrained by Trump’s lack of interiority. Once the film presents the man as having calcified into pure id, constantly reaching out for things he wants (food, women, real estate, adulation), it all becomes variations on the same scene; merely some new, colorful variation on Trump being untrustworthy, uncouth, vain, or suffocatingly boring (even when deflecting from performance anxiety while receiving oral sex from a mistress, Donald can’t help but brag about how well the slot machines in the lobby of his casino are performing).
Such is the conundrum of The Apprentice, which is simultaneously attempting to do a portraiture of a “great” man’s fall — Abbasi slaps a Citizen Kane poster on the wall of young Donald’s bachelor pad, signaling the film’s intentions while also serving as a sly reference to it reportedly being Trump’s favorite movie — while also imposing a psychology on boorish behavior we’re still very much living through. But once the film has laid out its theory of the case, that Trump has appropriated Cohn’s methods only in service of personal enrichment instead of country, the film has effectively reached its conclusion, yet there’s still nearly an hour left in its runtime. And that’s time which Abbasi fills with tawdry, TV movie style reenactments — including the controversial, since retracted, claim from Ivana that Donald raped her on the floor of their penthouse after she pointed out that he was going bald — or bludgeoning the viewer with foreshadowing of Trump’s eventual shift into politics. There’s a queasy fascination to the film’s early scenes and Strong’s Mephistophelian performance, but the film doesn’t trust the viewer enough to connect the dots on their own, so it simply reiterates what’s already playing out in front of us, every single day. The spine of the film is Cohn’s downfall, with Roy slowly dying of AIDS in isolation and ignominy while his former protégé ascends to the top of the mountain, but it’s pretty clear that Abbasi reserves most of his sympathies for America, which still suffers the consequences of Cohn’s lessons. The film is urgent in its message, but also entirely obvious.
DIRECTOR: Ali Abbasi; CAST: Sebastian Stan, Jeremy Strong, Maria Bakalova, Martin Donovan; DISTRIBUTOR: Briarcliff Entertainment/Rich Spirit; IN THEATERS: October 11; RUNTIME: 2 hr. 0 min.
