“The Apprentice” - Film Review
The United States is one day away from a presidential election. Living in a battleground state means every television ad-break is chock full of political ads. It seems only fitting that Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice had its wide release in the run-up to election day 2024. It’s a film that checks all the boxes of a biopic of Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan) as a young man in ’70s and ’80s New York City, and current-day Donald is once again running for president. But when you pull back from the logic of making and releasing this film now, there’s still the lingering question of why now, why this story, that The Apprentice can’t seem to answer.
New York City in the ‘70s and ‘80s was not the tourist-friendly hub we know it as today. Times Square was not filled with family-oriented stores and Broadway shows. Trump’s desire to build a luxury hotel next to Grand Central, a few blocks from Times Square, was seen as absurdly stupid. Who would pay luxury prices to stay there? It’s Donald’s budding friendship with notorious lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) that paves the way for Trump Tower to become a reality. The Apprentice cutely borrows the name of Donald’s early-2000s reality show to demonstrate how much of his present-day public persona comes from what he learned under the wing of Roy.
courtesy of Obscured Pictures
The Apprentice is a fairly by-the-books biopic with all-around great performances from Stan and Strong. Stan is not doing an SNL-type impersonation of Donald. It’s not hokey or over-the-top. In fact, it’s fairly restrained and makes the former president out to be quite a loser. Perhaps that’s why the real Donald has described those involved with the film as “human scum.” It’s quite the herculean effort to take someone who has spent his entire life desperately trying to be a part of the upper echelon of society and bring them down to earth. The building blocks of the film, from acting to directing to writing to costumes, all make for a strong product, but they can’t overshadow the nagging question.
All films are political. Even if they’re not about political figures or important moments in history, a film has a larger purpose in our world. Each piece of media we consume has an impact on how we view the rest of the world. All throughout the runtime of The Apprentice, there was the lingering wonder of who it was made for. If you’re someone who has never voted for Donald and has no intention of changing that, The Apprentice is giving them information they already know. Those who have voted for Donald in multiple presidential elections might not view Stan’s portrayal of him as negative. As for the people in the middle, this isn’t going to be the tipping point.
courtesy of Obscured Pictures
Trump is a man whose image has withstood the mocking of a disabled reporter, an arrest, and many more incidents that would have ruined the reputations of others. The Apprentice could have been more critical. Their desire to lay out the facts of his younger years is admirable, but at this point we know how individuals abuse people for the sake of gaining power. It’s not a new story, and in order to make it pertinent to today, The Apprentice needed to come out swinging. In fact, The Apprentice needed to take a note from its own screenplay: “None of it matters except winning…You create your own reality…Truth is a malleable thing.” As reality has shown us, there’s a futility in fighting for truth when a person has no desire to live in the real world.
The film ends with a scene reminiscent of the final moments of Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. Instead of seeing Darth Vader surgically created from the body of Anakin, we watch Donald Trump undergo liposuction and scalp-reduction surgeries to become the man he has always dreamed of being. It’s a grotesque sequence, and it has more bite than the rest of the film. As irate as The Apprentice made the real Donald Trump, it’s a little surprising that it doesn’t make a meaner punch.
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