REVIEW: The Apprentice [2024]

Rating: R | Runtime: 122 minutes
Release Date: October 11th, 2024 (USA)
Studio: Briarcliff Entertainment
Director(s): Ali Abbasi
Writer(s): Gabriel Sherman

I just fixed what others couldn’t.

Watching Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan) collecting rent checks at his father’s (Martin Donovan’s Fred) slum is the perfect picture of who this man has always been. Talks a big game. Thinks he has power. But really he’s fabricating lies about his stature and importance that, frankly, no one believes. Until he meets Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) and finds a mentor who sees a lump of clay ready to be molded into his own image rather than the pathetic disappointment his father resented. Whereas Fred thought his son’s weakness was wasted potential, Roy saw it as an open door. Instill this loser with confidence, lend him strategic political support, and reap the rewards.

As director Ali Abbasi and writer Gabriel Sherman’s The Apprentice shows, however, Trump’s weakness wasn’t born from insecurity. It was born from narcissism. So, the more Cohn does to prop Donald up, the more Donald begins to delude himself into believing he doesn’t need Roy. It’s the same thing that happened during his first term as president—surround yourself with formidable people who actually know what they are doing and cut them loose when they start to take the credit or go off-book. Because Trump doesn’t care about being successful. He only craves the appearance of success … and a good tax break. He makes his losses seem like wins just like Roy taught him. The difference is that he also believes his own lies.

The first half of the film is the real highlight here because Trump is still a green puppet sponging as much insight from Cohn as he can. It’s fun because he’s able to use Roy’s name and reputation as a means to procure whatever he wants and Roy backs him up with legitimate shrewdness. If only he could have kept that sway, Donald never would have let his own deficiencies turn his wealth into debt. He never would have needed to leverage the presidency as a means for personal profit. We’d still be in as much trouble democratically as we are now considering it began with the evangelicals and Reagan, but it wouldn’t have devolved so rapidly into the broad sycophantic cult MAGA has become.

The second half of the film is therefore much slower and somber in part because the stubbornness and refusal to listen to Cohn’s advice is what pushed Trump onto his political path. It’s easier to laugh at his naïveté when he’s just a young rube with smarter men pulling the strings. Watching the false sense of value the resulting rewards bestowed upon him become a cloak of invincibility isn’t because of what it eventually wrought. He was always cruel. Always vindictive. But now he was also a celebrity. Now he thought he could do no wrong. And that vanity is what real monsters want to exploit. Cohn had to produce results to keep Trump happy. The ones pulling his strings today must only keep his name in the papers.

The Apprentice is Trump’s story, but he isn’t where Sherman and Abbasi place our emotional investment. That lies with Cohn—a narcissist devoid of morals in his own right, but also, as presented in the film, a man with principles. Donald possesses neither. The thing we constantly hear from Roy is that America is his number one client. Everything he does is to “preserve freedom.” His freedom as opposed to those less fortunate. “Freedom” to make tons of money while electing a president who ultimately helped kill him through inaction on the AIDS crisis. But freedom, nonetheless. And boy does the final scene of Roy laughing at what he created after Trump wheels out an American flag cake hit hard despite neither man having a redeemable bone in their bodies.

It’s a testament to Strong’s performance. Don’t get me wrong, Stan is very good. His ability to play with the vulnerability of Donald Trump as a son and brother opposite the smoke and mirrors of him as a public figure is fantastic. But he is a facsimile. He’s the hollow mimic playing make believe. Cohn is the real deal. He’s actually invincible because he’s smart enough to know which wars to avoid. So, watching his vulnerability escape as time passes proves more impactful than Trump walling his away. Because seeing someone harden into stone will never be as interesting as watching that rock crumble. That’s what Strong delivers. It’s what earned him all the accolades in “Succession”. He finds humanity in amorality.

I feel bad for not yet mentioning Maria Bakalova as Ivana, but the film doesn’t really give her much beyond her role as the victim of Donald’s growing lack of empathy. She’s good in the part, but she’s as much a pawn to the whole like Donovan’s Fred. Catherine McNally’s Mary Anne is the actor to note because her voice of authority is heard where Ivana’s isn’t. It just goes to show that Donald is saddled with Mommy and Daddy issues. It’s what makes him who he is and why opportunists are all too willing to cash in on his glossy popularity to get what they want while he takes the fall. Although, after everything he hasn’t fallen for, they’ve probably realized consequences don’t exist. Sucks to be us.