Peeling back the layers of one of America’s most controversial figures, “The Apprentice” delves into the younger years of Donald Trump, superbly exploring the snotty, grunge-filled underbelly of New York City’s business culture.
Set throughout the 70s and 80s, the film depicts the rise of Trump (Sebastian Stan) in the real estate business while chronicling his relationship with notorious lawyer and mentor Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) and his wife Ivana Trump (Maria Bakalova).
Although this could have been a simple hit piece on the presidential candidate, director Ali Abbasi pieces together a narrative similar to 2010’s “The Social Network,” offering viewers an unbiased lens into a cultural figure’s past.
Abbasi makes it clear through his concise, visually pleasing direction that he wants the audience to make up their own decision on the central character.
The director’s choice to shoot on film against an onslaught of underground 70s rock is not only an engaging call back to movies of a bygone era, but it helps slide viewers into his vision of 1970s New York, littered with sidewalk garbage, human obscenities and a looming patriarchal threat.
Gabriel Sherman’s screenplay compliments Abbasi’s direction with precision, intersplicing the film’s macho tones with themes of homosexuality and the toxic male persona.
Trump’s origin story may be interesting, but it’s in Roy Cohn’s internalized homophobia and destructive masculinity that the picture’s thematic relevance is built. If watching Trump’s role model fall into obscurity isn’t obvious enough, I’m not sure how else you would portray the central message.
There were doubts about the film’s casting — particularly Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump — yet the cast overcame these odds, with all three leading actors providing their best performances to date.
Stan dodges devolving into Trump’s hysterical traits, instead focusing on the politician’s smaller mannerisms, giving himself time to transform into the modern-day figure as the story moves along.
It’s a character arc that is both fascinating and horrifying like watching a car slowly burst into a ball of flames.
You would expect that Stan would steal every scene, however, it’s Strong’s role as the vicious Roy Cohn that is demanding the audience’s attention. Strong’s interpretation of Cohn feels realistic while also exaggerating the lawyer’s masculine undertones for comedic effects, allowing his character to fall into a spiral of self-hatred and isolation. It’s a powerful display of dry-wit humor that deteriorates into a deeply dramatic role.
“The Apprentice” sidesteps many common problems that come with the biopic genre, although it still falls ill to the classic “wink wink, nudge nudge, look where we are now” trope.
Whether it be characters saying that Trump could run for office one day, or even a reference to Ronald Reagan’s “Let’s Make America Great Again” slogan, the film can’t help but giggle at itself, thinking that its modern-day references are unique and silly. They’re not.
Aside from those moments, the movie does a fine job translating historical beats into an easy-flowing story, that is until the film’s film quarter. It’s here that the movie loses sight of its narrative focus, zipping from plot point to plot point in the hopes of reaching its final destination. The vague story direction first goes off the rails with a scene that is incredibly hard to digest: the sexual assault of Ivana Trump. The scene goes on for too long, it feels tinged with hate and it completely sticks out from the rest of the movie. This was an event that the film needed to discuss, but showing the scene in such graphic detail felt counterintuitive to what it was trying to say.
Ignoring the hazy final act, the movie manages to tell an alluring narrative with an exhilarating direction while dissecting a multitude of masculine ideas to great success, making “The Apprentice” one of 2024’s most interesting films yet.
The film released Oct. 11 and is in theaters now.