“The Apprentice” (2024) is not a reference to producer Mark Burnett’s popular NBC reality television series starring coproducer Donald J. Trump, the real estate mogul, as the judge and host before he became Presidon’t. The title refers to the relationship between Trump and his mentor, ruthless lawyer and McCarthyite, Roy Cohn starting in 1973 until Cohn’s death in 1986. In his second starring role for 2024 after “A Different Man,” Sebastian Stan plays the young man from Queens with ambition to become a mover and shaker in Manhattan, and Jeremy Strong plays the controversial, amoral son of the Bronx. While the two bridge and tunnel natives make it to the Big Apple, will they lose their souls to get there?
“The Apprentice” is the first theatrically released film about Presidon’t, but not the first biographical drama about his life. There was an ABC television movie, “Trump Unauthorized” (2005), and let’s ignore the mocking comedies or pro-Presidont’s films from “Christian” production companies or a certain pardoned convicted felon—plain political propaganda. A Presidon’t supporter helped fund this film and was horrified once he screened it. Presidon’t attorneys sent a cease-and-disease letter. Journalist author, writer Gabriel Sherman, and director Ali Abbasi may have accomplished what no one has ever done before—made a film that made Trump and Cohn seem like sympathetic human beings who are easy to empathize with during different acts of the film.
Stan frames Trump as a plucky, even principled, underdog trying to swim against the tide of his small-minded, abusive father, Fred (Martin Donovan), and avoid becoming like his big brother, Fred Jr. (Charlie Carrick), who self-medicates to obliterate the unspoken childhood trauma. Trump the dreamer is easily impressed and deferential to the made men who surround Cohn and is drawn to his considerable power and willingness to exercise it. He also navigates the Trump family dynamic with an ability to observe others and show consideration for their vulnerabilities. He even recognizes his own missteps and tries to improve. This man is still capable of seeing the world outside of him and is thirsty for community.
Abbasi, who has a solid career of making unique and riveting movies such as “Border” (2018) and “Holy Spider” (2022), depicts the down-and-out Manhattan of the Seventies. The sordid, decaying city seems like the real antagonist, a graffiti-riddled dissolute dragon that Trump wants to defeat to restore the kingdom to its former glory. By proxy, “The Apprentice” makes it possible to look at its denizens, whether the Department of Justice or the exploited regular people, including people of color, through Trump’s jaundiced eye as the enemy. When a man throws a pot of boiling water at Trump as he tries to collect rent, it is easy to get lulled and impressed that he went from a guy who had to deal with rough housers to rubbing elbows with the muckety mucks. Abbasi makes Trump seem like a hard-working scrapper.
Cohn spots the blonde young man with stars in his eyes and for inexplicable reasons, adopts him and decides to flex his considerable muscle to help Trump make good on the promises to himself. Initially “The Apprentice” makes it seem as if Cohn’s corrupting influence has an end game to lure the initially oblivious Trump to his bed when Cohn plies Trump with liquor and invites him to thinly disguised orgies, but it is comparatively innocent interest, not grooming. Cohn senses a soulmate with similar sympathies. Instead, despite Cohn’s grumbling at Trump’s liberties when eliciting advice, Cohn becomes an empowering father figure who shows the ropes to Trump and is constantly available at all hours to rescue him. There is a delicious scene where Cohn faces off with Fred Sr., who doesn’t miss the implication of Cohn’s compliment to his son as a jab at the old man’s inability to nurture his son. He is the fairy godfather that grants Trump’s all his wishes and scary dog privileges.
Strong’s performance is unsettling, which is a compliment. Strong feels as if he combined the cadence of Christopher Walken’s vocals with sinus problems and the dead-eyed, stillness stare of a predator who never blinks and does not even enjoy the kill but keeps swimming like a shark or some animated corpse with more will than a zombie, but no less voracious. His take on Cohn is utterly joyless except occasionally with Trump until the end when Cohn is at its nadir. Cohn shows some delight as he basks in his adopted son’s inadequate attention.
The middle act shows how Trump fares under Cohn’s tutelage as the moon of success eclipses his humanity without completely obliterating it. While Trump and Cohn were opposites in terms of physical features, the first time that Trump sees Cohn, it is like a scene out of a F. Scott Fitzgerald novel with the spotlight on Cohn in a light-colored suit, which Trump mimics in a later scene under Cohn’s unsmiling but encouraging stare, still coaching his nascent pupil. At this point, Trump is still a person capable of love and warmth, but as he gets confident, a rough coldness and intolerance for frailty as if it is a contagion begins to settle and displace understanding. Meanwhile Cohn is beginning to feel the chill of mortality as the AIDS pandemic hits close to home.
“The Apprentice” becomes tragic with one man losing his ability to have feelings while the other is regaining the basic building blocks of humanity by connecting with his finite existence and needs the kindness that he extinguished from his pupil. Without each other, the wolves begin to snap at their individual heels. Enter Ivana (Maria Bakalova), who is wisely wary at the outset then sees the red flags and thinks that she can work with them. Ivana was always a stalwart public supporter of her children’s father so the depiction of more intimate, widening fissures between the husband and wife are as shocking as a bucket of ice water on a subzero day. In one scene, Ivana tries to encourage Trump to express grief, which he rejects as if she told him to self-immolate. Trump snuffs out the last vestige of humanity without any prompting, and the film implies that they split because she still made him human.
The final act is the closest that “The Apprentice” gets to the Trump who would get elected to the highest government position. While the incredibly attractive Stan is such a deft actor that he somehow finds a way to resemble a man who is not, inside and out, Stan still imbues vestiges of humanity at Trump’s onscreen worst. This section is probably the part that riled up Presidon’t’s supporters, especially depictions of sexual violence and physical shortcomings. It is never as much fun to watch someone achieve success and become a white sepulchre. Cohn is on death’s door, and his public power is finally winding down while Trump’s body and mind reflect the deleterious effect of the hedonistic lifestyle that comes with his definition of achievement: a sea of sexually available blondes, including his wife, and not being able to enjoy them except for the bragging rights. While the film mostly shies away from descending into a “Saturday Night Live” sketch in tone or execution, this part is the closest that it gets to merciless skewering of each man, and even then, most viewers will not be able to indulge their thirst for unwavering cruelty because it is simply sad. Even together, they are alone. Hell is gaudy and filled with fake fans and gifts.
If it has a flaw, it is the music, which is fine, but exists to sound more like the brand name disco hits from the Seventies and Eighties that production probably could noy afford. We know the ending. If people leave “The Apprentice” reluctant to recommend it or feeling vaguely at sea even though it is an excellent movie, it will be because the filmmakers will have moviegoers leaving with a bitter taste in their mouth. It gets worse.
