THE APPRENTICE – Review by Liz Braun
Donald Trump is an idiot. Anyone paying any attention whatsoever knows he’s been a short-fingered-vulgarian punchline for 40 years.
So what we talk about when we talk about The Apprentice is Jeremy Strong in the role of Roy Cohn, a performance of such ferocity and richness that a viewer is left slack-jawed in wonder.
The Apprentice suggests that Roy Cohn created a grifters’ playbook to live by, rules that allowed Cohn to do whatever was required to run roughshod over the law in America and become rich and infamous in the process.
According to the movie, Cohn taught Trump all his moves, mentoring his young friend and teaching him the very rules of the game Trump used in his own rise to notoriety: always be on the attack, deny everything, never admit defeat.
Trump’s character illustrates the absolute banality of evil at every turn here, while the “evil genius” aspect supplied by Cohn’s character provides delicious contrast. Seeing them together is like watching a particularly good episode of Pinky & The Brain.
Sebastian Stan stars in The Apprentice as Donald Trump and plays him, at least initially, as a callow chump. The film opens with a nod to Richard Nixon and his “I am not a crook” speech, perhaps to establish that corruption in high places is not exactly a new thing.
Until he meets and is befriended by Roy Cohn, Trump is presented as a kid working for his bully of a father (Martin Donovan) in real estate. But then, Trump and his father Fred are sued by the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice for housing discrimination for refusing to rent to Black Americans.
That’s the legal case that kickstarts the action in The Apprentice. Trump brings it to Cohn, hoping the lawyer can help him win. How Cohn gets that win is through blackmail, a situation that seems to shock his young client. Nonetheless, the two men become friends, and Trump becomes an avid student of manipulation and corruption.
The Apprentice is a film about how Trump became Trump; besides Roy Cohn’s influence, the movie covers the 1970s and ‘80s version of Trump — his marriage to Ivana (Maria Bakalova), his failed casinos in Atlantic City, what looks like a growing reliance on amphetamines, and so on. We watch Trump avoid his dying friend Cohn in a way that’s both cruel and cowardly, and thereafter something ice cold about his personality seems to take over. The story ends around the time Trump’s public profile starts to become larger than life, with him getting The Art of The Deal ghost-written.
It’s an often amusing tale, but essentially tragic. Director Ali Abbasi shows the long-gone crumbs of humanity in Donald Trump; the notion of Trump starting out as an inept, easily impressed young man is an interesting take. Expect heated viewer arguments after every screening — always a good sign.
Note: The Apprentice was not part of TIFF but was shown in a special screening during TIFF.
