The Apprentice Review: LFF 2024
Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice depicts the rise of a genuine American supervillain
I’ve heard many worry that the Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice would humanise the man too much, give a platform to his nonsense and risk endearing him to a fresh audience. Set those fears aside, because if anyone comes out of this film not believing the man has been an absolute weasel from a very young age then they’re clearly beyond the influence of reason. But more than just an eye-opening expose on the businessman turned politician, The Apprentice is also a really good time at the cinema.
Director Ali Abbasi’s last film, 2022’s Holy Spider, was one of my favourites of that years London Film Festival. A thriller about a government allowing a serial killer to get away with his crimes, Abbasi regularly concerns himself with stories about the abuse of power – a theme that continues throughout The Apprentice.
We join young Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan) as a boastful nepo baby in 1970s New York. A transparent social climber, he rubs shoulders with the city’s richest residents in a private members club and is thrilled when he catches the eye of infamous lawyer Roy Cohn (Succession’s Jeremy Strong.) Cohn is a kingmaker, friend to Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy he knows everyone worth knowing, and has gotten many of the USA’s most powerful men out of some very sticky situations.
After Donald hires Roy to help him beat a charge that his fathers apartment buildings are discriminating against black tenants, the two go on to form an unlikely friendship. Roy sees potential in Donald and starts to mould him in his own image. The Apprentice charts around 15 years in the life of Trump as he grows his real estate empire, eventually becoming ungovernable even to the man who made him.
I’ve been a Sebastian Stan stan for a long time and thrilled that this might be the work that finally wakes the world up to his talent. The ultimate character actor, he may be best known as an MCU superhero but he’s been playing absolute weirdos for years now, and this is a career best performance. Where it might be easy for many to portray an SNL-esque caricature of the former President, Stan so successfully mimics the subtleties of the man that it’s truly uncanny. His mannerisms; from the duck pout to the hand gestures are absolutely on point, and the evolution of his idiosyncratic manner of speaking is as hilarious as it is scarily accurate.
Jeremy Strong is sensational as the lying, conniving, blackmailing Cohn. Emanating waves of sheer ‘fuck you’ power it’s remarkable how despicable he is able to make this character before doing a complete 180 in his final scenes to portray his frailty at the end of his life. The Apprentice is a masterclass in acting from these two men.
While Abbasi clearly attempts to safeguard himself with a title card at the start explaining that some of the events depicted have been dramatized, his style of film making really says otherwise. Filmed handheld and documentary style with a filter that makes it appear as though it’s a freshly uncovered period film, you couldn’t get a clearer feeling that what we are seeing is meant to be truth.
The events depicted are shocking, from Trump abusing his wife Ivana (Maria Bakalova) to lying to lenders, defrauding taxpayers and trying to steal from his own family. But we don’t really learn anything new about his story; and if you’re expecting The Apprentice to dig into what exactly makes Trump tick then we don’t really get that here either. A genuinely bad guy driven by greed and self-interest, Stan’s Trump is about as subtle as a supervillain.
It feels like a crazy turn of events, but this biopic of Donald Trump is some of the most fun I’ve had in the cinema this year. As funny as it is vile, Stan and Strong make this an absolute must see.
The Apprentice is playing as part of the BFI London Film Festival 2024. It opens in UK cinemas on 18th October 2024.
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