With only a month until the Presidential election, an origin story about the Republican candidate and, let’s be honest, political scourge of the last nine years Donald Trump, could be seen as an “October surprise”. Trump’s people have fought hard to keep Ali Abassi’s controversial The Apprentice from releasing anywhere for that very reason…okay, that reason and Trump’s own ego. But failing that as they have due to Briarcliff Entertainment swooping in as distributor, the film paints a Frankenstein-esque portrait where Donald is the egotistical money monster, created in a lab of infinite corruption by the notorious Roy Cohn and his father, Fred Trump.
The Apprentice is more of a dark comedy than a dramatic retelling. Donald Trump is already a buffoon who believes electric boats run on solar power and that windmills cause cancer, and the film teases the most idiotic aspects that we have been dealing with for so long. But it’s also keen on representing how dangerous it can be when someone with the naivete, ignorance, and narcissistic tendencies of Trump attains a little bit of power. Screenwriter Gabriel Sherman gets lost in trying to show too much about Trump, but the film is still insightful, funny, and a little bit scary.
Sebastian Stan would seem an unlikely choice to play Trump, but since there are no orange Oompa Loompas around to be more accurate, Stan turns out to be pretty damn convincing in the role. The Apprentice is drawn in two distinct halves, one hour set in the ’70s and ’80s as a young, bullying Trump tries to emerge as a “killer” businessman just like his father. Sherman’s journalistic skills are put to best use here as we dive deep into the New York political scene, as well as known details about Trump. In the first five minutes, we see him wining and dining some woman in a fancy bar, displaying his bigoted tendencies towards tenants at one of his apartment buildings, and finally being vacuumed up into the orbit of Cohn, played by Succession star Jeremy Strong. Trump and his family are being sued by the government for housing discrimination against Black applicants, and he needs the bulldog Cohn to get them out of this jam. Cohn, whose corruption goes back to representing McCarthy during his communist witch hunt and as a prosecutor in the Rosenberg espionage trials, is seen as a cold, brutal schemer and manipulator who will hurt anyone to get what he wants. He instills in Donald three rules that we, unfortunately, have lived under for too long:
- Attack attack attack.
- Admit nothing, deny everything.
- Claim victory and never admit defeat. That’s how you win.
That third one should sound pretty familiar at this point. The Apprentice is most compelling as we see these lessons being learned by Trump and put into practice in every aspect of his life. He tries to strong-arm his way into getting his Trump hotel built on 42nd street without paying New York property taxes, but it’s Cohn’s destructive tactics that win the day. But Trump is a quick learner, and we see him put Cohn’s lessons into effect even in his personal life and relationship with first wife Ivana Trump, played by Oscar winner Maria Bakalova. As someone raised by his demanding father and groomed by Cohn to value money and power above all else, Trump tries to buy off Ivanka with a signing bonus just for marrying him. It’s an attitude that will be repeated in all of Trump’s relationships with women he has paid off over the years.
The second half of The Apprentice is less focused and less perceptive, but it’s also the part that Donald Trump probably hates the most because it unabashedly is there to make fun of him. With Cohn ailing and Trump the epitome of Reagan era “greed is good” capitalism, the dynamic has shifted. Sherman’s screenplay pokes fun at the origins of MAGA, Trump’s reported liposuction surgery and hair plugs, his pill-popping of amphetamines, and even his orange-hued skin. But we also see how gross of a person he is on the inside, including the notorious scene where Trump sexually assaults the wife he’s just told he no longer finds attractive. During all of this, Trump is looking to build his Trump Tower monstrosity and begins to entertain the idea of a political run. It’s a lot, but the point seems to be that Donald Trump has become the monster that Cohn created and now he’s been unleashed on the world, this creature of pure avarice. The film tries to make us feel sympathy for Cohn, an undeniably awful human being, and unsurprisingly it fails miserably.
Stan is brilliant as Trump, refusing to fall into an easy caricature. It’s amazing to see him evolve and really grow into the role. It’s Stan’s finest performance and should have people talking this awards season. In the beginning, he doesn’t look much like Trump, but later it’s stunning the resemblance. He has the hand gestures, the head movements, the emphasis on words like “loser” that we’ve all become so accustomed to. But what Stan captures most is Trump’s insecurity, especially when surrounded by people more powerful than him. He shrinks away from them and pumps himself up around those he deems weaker. Trump is a con man through and through, but the biggest con he’s pulling is on himself. At one point, he was a flawed guy who had the capacity to pretend affection towards others. Later, that aspect of himself has been burned away by shameless self-promotion and sleaziness.
Strong’s take on Roy Cohn is similar to his Kendall Roy. At times oddly robotic and unblinking, it can seem like Cohn doesn’t care but deep inside he’s figuring out the best way to destroy everyone in the room. But Cohn is also painfully lonely. As a man who considers himself a shark, Cohn hid his homosexuality from most people and that made him very reserved. It also made him very timid later when he needed help from Trump and other people he once looked down on.
Trump is what a twisted version of the American Dream looks like. Everything about him is a con: the braggadocio, the business acumen, the way with women, and most especially the patriotism that he and Cohn espouse. Only in America and only during that particular time in our history, when we celebrated wealth and celebrity more than anything else, could a man like Trump rise to power. I wish it hadn’t jumped from his apprenticeship under Cohn to the power-mad mogul we know him as now. There’s a lot of unexplored territory in between that would be fascinating. So your enjoyment is likely going to depend on your feelings about the former reality TV game show host. If you like him, you’ll probably think Trump is a victim and that The Apprentice is unfair. If you hate him, you’re going to love it as the film skewers him and exposes his worst traits. But is The Apprentice an “October surprise” that could hurt Trump’s election prospects? Probably not, but Trump’s going to be pissed anyway and probably threaten legal action. Again. My suggestion is to see it while you can because it might not be around for long.
The Apprentice opens in theaters on October 11th.
