Jeremy Strong (left) as Roy Cohn and Sebastian Stan (right) as Donald Trump in "The Apprentice," a film by Ali Abbasi. (Photo by Pief Weyman)
It’s the movie that the current Republican candidate for president doesn’t want you to see. Just 25 days before the 2024 election, “The Apprentice,” a slice-of-life look at the rise of Donald J. Trump, gets a wide release in theaters nationwide – in red states, in blue states, in purple states.
Iranian born writer-director and Denmark based Ali Abbasi’s first English-language feature film wisely doesn’t try to take on a whole swath of the man who would become “45.” He zooms his lens on an early chapter of the rise of the very stable genius when Trump (played earnestly by Sebastian Stan) was just starting out to pursue his dream as a Manhattan real estate mogul.
However, the film is just as much about Trump’s fiercely intense mentor, ruthless attorney Roy Cohn (played by Jeremy Strong, Kendall Roy on HBO’s “Succession”), shades of whom we see today in Trump’s character. Trump was Cohn’s apprentice – and we see he was someone Cohn had been searching for – more handsome, younger, and someone in need of a father figure that he could mold in his image; Frankenstein to the mad scientist.
Maria Bakalova (left) as Ivana Trump and Sebastian Stan (right) as Donald Trump in "The Apprentice," a film by Ali Abbasi. (Photo by Pief Weyman)
The director, from a screenplay by Gabriel Sherman, who wrote the bestseller “The Loudest Voice in the Room,” the biography of Fox News founder Roger Ailes, takes us inside 1970s New York, full of rampant crime, urban blight, and financial crisis. But Trump sees a way to turn it around. And a young upstart with big ideas.
Director Ali Abbasi on the set of "The Apprentice." (Photo by Pief Weyman)
There are merely slight hints in the film of Trump’s later political ambitions, but there’s no flash forwards wisely to his 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns or his four years as president. That what keeps Abbasi’s film squarely centered and more of a character study than a film about a would-be president.
Trump here is a social climber, wowed by people with money, power and fame. While out on a date at a private club he frequents to make sure he's "seen," he’s more interested in the richest and influential people walking in the room than his companion. She gets mad and leaves.
He’s a caretaker for his alcoholic brother, Fred (Charlie Carrick) and he’s a son in the shadow of his father laser focused and set to prove something to the old man.
Don is Fred Trump Sr.'s lackey. The young Trump in a trench coat and suit knocking on doors of pops’ Trump Village apartment complex collecting rent and getting a lashing from people who can’t pay up and giving back his own threats leaving fed up with this lot in life. The second son in the shadow.
It’s also the time when the Trump family real estate business is embroiled in discrimination lawsuits. A 1973 federal lawsuit was brought against Trump, his father, Fred, and Trump Management for the company’s practices in their New York housing developments.
Jeremy Strong (left) as Roy Cohn and Sebastian Stan (right) as Donald Trump in "The Apprentice," a film by Ali Abbasi. (Photo by Pief Weyman)
And this is where Cohn comes in as a young Trump approaches the man with a reputation to represent the family in court over the alleged discrimination. Cohn was chief counsel during the infamous anti-Communist hearings and witch-hunts of the McCarthy era.
The script leans heavy in the beginning of Trump’s big dreams when, at the age of 25, he wanted to replace the crumbling hotel Commodore near Grand Central Terminal in a then undesirable area of Manhattan and get the backing of the Hyatt corporation to open it as a brand spanking hotel. He succeeded with a loan from his father and a tax exemption from the city.
Cinematographer Kasper Tuxen’s work, taking us through New York in the 70s, 80s and 90s, captures the moments along with the story of one man’s overly ambitious rise to power and the people he leaves behind in his wake. “The Apprentice” doesn’t preach lessons about how bad or good today’s hero of the MAGA movement and Republican party is. It’s more of a Machiavellian novel as Trump takes in Cohn’s recipe for success: Rule 1. Attack. Attack. Attack; Rule 2: Admit nothing. Deny everything. Rule 3: Claim victory and never admit defeat.
And Trump sees that it works – in business and in his relationships leaving him with no need for Cohn, especially when he discovers Cohn’s double life. He was a closeted gay man who died from complications from AIDs; The film portrays Trump shunning the man who helped to mold him after Cohn contracts the disease (Cohn said he was dying from liver disease to hide the truth), which at the time was taboo.
Maria Bakalova (left) as Ivana Trump and Sebastian Stan (right) as Donald Trump in "The Apprentice," a film by Ali Abbasi. (Photo by Pief Weyman)
As Trump rises to power, we see him working with a ghostwriter on a book that would later become his bestseller “The Art of the Deal.”
And, by this time, he’s become ruthless and narcissistic. Some of the most controversial scenes (Trump’s communications director Steven Cheung has already said the filmmaker will be facing lawsuits; the Trump team early on in the making of the film ordered Abbasi to cease and desist) include Trump telling his then wife, Ivana, (played with a shrewd sensibility by Maria Bakalova) that he can’t bear to kiss her at which point she lashes out.
It’s then that he tackles her to the ground and rapes her. (In her 1990 divorce deposition, Ivana Trump said she had been sexually assaulted but relinquished the claims when Trump put in his bid for president in 2015.)
In another scene, Trump goes under the knife for scalp reduction surgery to permanently fix a bald spot and gets liposuction to remove fat from his torso.
Whether you love or hate Trump, “The Apprentice” it isn't so much about his story, but about what it takes to gain fame and power and what people do with it after they have it. The film, which took Abbassi seven years to get made, is just good cinema.
