The Apprentice – Film Review
Reviewed by Harris Dang on the 11th of October 2024
Madman Films presents a film by Ali Abbasi
Produced by Daniel Bekerman, Amy Baer, Jacob Jarek, Tony Grier, Julianne Forde, Ruth Treacy, and Louis Tisne
Starring Sebastian Stan, Jeremy Strong, Maria Bakalova, Martin Donovan, Ben Sullivan, Charlie Carrick, Mark Rendall, and Joe Pingue
Running Time: 123 minutes
Rating: MA15+
Release Date: the 10th of October 2024
Set in 1970s New York City, The Apprentice tells the story of a young Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan) and details his life when he was a real estate businessman. While he is wealthy beyond reproach, he struggles to stand out in the world amongst his well-revered peers. With little to no support from his family, including his belligerent father Fred (an amazingly reprehensible Martin Donovan), he seeks counsel from the imposing Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong). Roy is a New York City prosecutor who is best known for working with Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Second Red Scare.
Taking Trump under his wing, the two begin a relationship that sparks a fire in Trump that motivates him to become the best in American business. The fire in their relationship gives birth to the towering man that we know today: with his undeniable charisma, his up-and-coming business empire, his uncompromising approach to success, his tumultuous marriage with Ivana (an effectively sympathetic Maria Bakalova), and his gradual physical stature.
The Apprentice is the latest film from acclaimed filmmaker Ali Abbasi who is best known for his dark, off-kilter, weighty filmmaking within genre-centric storytelling. With his childbirth horror flick Shelley (2016) to his surrealistic, magical realism tale Border (2018), and his true-crime film Holy Spider (2022), Abbasi has made quite an impression for his detail-oriented storytelling chops. When it was announced that he would direct a film about the pivotal moment in the life of former president Donald Trump, reactions for it ranged from curiosity to trepidation.
From interviews by Abbasi and his cast and crew, they were all insistent that The Apprentice is a film that does not set out to glorify or denigrate Trump but to humanise him. While the script by Gabriel Sherman lacks innovation in its rags-to-riches narrative about how absolute power corrupts absolutely, The Apprentice maintains a balance in showcasing Trump as the infamous, controversial figure that we know today (the film does not hold back in showing his monstrous actions, neither does it condone them) while not coming off as a hagiography.
While the story remains predictable in how it all plays out in its birth of a monster, the performances from the cast come off remarkably well. With no pretensions toward pantomime, parody, impersonation or narcissism (only within the means of portraying Trump and not from the actors themselves), the cast imbue a sense of humanity behind their work. This makes their actions from the characters feel convincing, surprising, and even somewhat sympathetic. The relationship between Trump and Cohn is the heart of the film, as it encapsulates how one’s naivety and ambition can be moulded and manipulated, how everything has a price, how capitalism can corrupt the starved and serve the greedy while also providing a compelling two-hander with Stan and Strong, providing great chemistry as student and master.
Abbasi continues his storytelling streak in keeping The Apprentice detail-oriented, making the visual flourishes and period touches engagingly cinematic and narratively effective. The shot-on-video colour grading and the handheld cinematography by Kasper Tuxen (best known for his work in The Worst Person in the World and Riders of Justice) lends the film a feel of authenticity. When Trump’s relationships become rocky, the fun-and-games from the romances (bromance?) between Cohn and Ivana wither away as much as Trump’s hair and Abbasi handles the drama with an entertaining, operatic air. Scenes where characters undergo transformations and epiphanies are delivered with gravitas, including the use of a choral score (composed by Martin Dirkov) when Trump undergoes surgery or when Cohn leaves a scene with anger and regret, as steam from the sewers shroud him into a sealed, inevitable fate.
Overall, The Apprentice overcomes its predictability and superficiality through its stellar execution. It is a well-told, well-made, and very well-acted tale that succeeds in its indictment of the American dream as well as in its balanced depiction of Donald Trump. Recommended.
Summary: The Apprentice overcomes its predictability and superficiality through its stellar execution.
3.5
Solid
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