The Apprentice

Donald J Trump (Sebastian Stan) may be one of the most recognisable, imitated and reviled figures globally – yet, in some quarters, he is sadly revered.

There is an enigma at the heart of the man who is America’s former, and possibly future, president. How did we allow him to happen? How do so many people buy into the spiel of a person who is such a proudly ignorant huckster? Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi attempts to explore this enigma in The Apprentice. Those with knowledge of Trump’s history may have a two-word answer: Roy Cohn. For those unaware, Cohn (Jeremy Strong) is one of the most important, and malignly corrupt, figures in modern American political history. And not just because he made Donald J Trump.

A lawyer who cut his teeth leading senator Joe McCarthy’s “red scare” witchunts, Cohn went on to become the attorney of choice for New York’s mafiosos, a mentor to some of Richard Nixon’s most poisonous acolytes, and the man who showed Trump the legal ropes of grimy 1970s Manhattan.

In Ali Abbasi’s film, we first meet Trump as a brash but socially stunted heir to his father’s (Martin Donovan) property empire. Determined to be the apple of his cruel father’s eye, he looks to make a name for himself with real estate deals. In that pursuit, he seeks out Cohn – the man who knows every New  Yorker you want to know.

Strong is predictably superb as the influential lawyer, conveying the tough-guy facade that masks the vulnerabilities of a man whose history and struggle with his homosexuality have been memorably portrayed in Angels in America. It’s Stan’s performance, though, that deserves the most praise, as his portrayal of Trump transcends the typical impressions we see endlessly. He starts by playing Trump as a trust fund kid overshadowed by his father, quite different from the figure we know and loathe. Yet, as the film progresses, he becomes The Donald – bloated and so unaware of his own ludicrousness that everyone, including wife Ivana (Borat 2’s Maria Bakalova), is drawn in by the gravitational pull of his ego.

However, despite its strong performances and a cleverly observed script, the film ultimately leaves Abbasi no closer to unraveling the enigma. As the story progresses and Stan’s portrayal becomes increasingly Trump-like, it feels like the story begins to buy into his self-mythology rather than puncture and interrogate it.

As a result, The Apprentice is ultimately unsatisfying. But one is not sure how much that is a product of the frightening world that continues to indulge the Trump circus rather than a failure on the part of Abbasi.

Mark Worgan

The Apprentice does not have a UK release date yet.

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