Is it possible to make an incisive film that reveals anything new about a man like Donald Trump? He's already a former American president, one of the most recognizable figures in the world, currently the subject of multiple ongoing criminal investigations, and once again a candidate running a hateful campaign for the top office who spends as much time in front of cameras as possible. He's insecure and corrupt — all openly so — wielding his wealth to avoid accountability. We already know who he is and how, above all else, he'd sell anyone out for a few extra bucks.
Ali Abbasi's The Apprentice is a film that attempts to confront this man and the country that gave rise to him, only to come out with disappointingly little of substance to show for it. Written by Gabriel Sherman, whose most notable movie before this was the insufferable Independence Day: Resurgence, it gestures toward more complicated ideas about the ways America is too often built on lying hucksters who are empowered to pull one over on us because the system lets them.
It's also a well-acted film where Sebastian Stan, recently excellent in the more boldly ambitious A Different Man, gives what is largely a layered performance as Trump. He even initially avoids falling into mere impersonation before diving headfirst into it anyway in a hollow second half.
But it's in the beginning where The Apprentice seems like it could have been going somewhere. Focusing less on the Trump we now know with all his cartoonish speeches and empty posturing, we see him being taken under the wing of Roy Cohn in 1970s New York. Played with a leering presence by Jeremy Strong of Succession, he's a cruel man who will do anything it takes to win.
As the two form a bond, we see Trump finding some real estate success based on next to nothing, running Cohn's playbook that inflates one's accomplishments and crushes any dissent that arises. When Trump meets Ivana, played by a wasted Maria Bakalova of 2022's Bodies Bodies Bodies, it gets a little sidetracked, though the thematic center feels a bit more substantive in brief flashes. It's all about the making of a uniquely American monster and how Cohn created someone even he could not control, as Trump ends up tossing him aside when he no longer has any use for him. If you close your eyes, you can almost imagine that you're watching a competent enough yet still less compelling version of Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street in both style and narrative, though without moments that pack the punch of that film's final grim "sell me this pen" scene.
Namely, midway through The Apprentice starts to come apart. It takes on a more digital look, and Stan's performance becomes more Trumpian. This is not played for intentional comedy, but it still undercuts the more serious beats that the film is going for. History requires that we see how Trump became as utterly strange of a person as he is, but the shift is so sudden that it's shallow. Similarly, any deeper insights about the way America is descending into even greater callousness or how greed is consuming everything get lost in the more standard progression of the narrative.
The Apprentice attempts to invite sympathy for the closeted Cohn, who gets a bitter taste of his own medicine as he's dying from AIDS. This gives Strong a couple of scenes to make the most of the pain and isolation. At the same time, this means we see less of him and more of Stan's shallow second half turn for the rest of the film.
One could generously say that this shallowness is the point — that this Trump is actually a performance, and that Cohn was similarly putting on an act to project power when they first met — though this is likely giving the film too much credit. It all just zips along, rarely letting anything linger long enough to leave an impact.
After a more measured first half, the film loses its grasp on any nuance. When the film then starts to repeatedly wink to the audience with the present knowledge we have about where Trump ends up, including in the concluding scene that plays more like a contrived punchline than a fitting finale.
America and the figures who rise to power deserve to be put under a microscope. That Trump threw out vague legal threats after The Apprentice premiered at this year's Cannes Film Festival which, inevitably, came to nothing serves as a testament to this. The trouble is the film doesn't reveal much of anything new about its subject, the country that he lied his way to the top of or, just as importantly, what makes such monstrous men. Greed, corruption and cruelty are poison in this country, but The Apprentice stops short of uncovering a diagnosis, let alone the antidote. If filmmakers are going to confront the frauds selling us all a bill of goods, and there will always be plenty attempting to do so, they must tell better, deeper stories. If not, I have a pen I can sell you.
The Apprentice
