Reeder’s Movie Reviews: The Apprentice

When a 26-year-old Donald Trump encounters the controversial attorney Roy Cohn for the first time in director Ali Abbasi’s new film, he tells him, admiringly, “You’re brutal.” The Apprentice spins a cautionary tale, the origin story of a wealthy, polarizing character viewed with relative sympathy, then disdain, by Abbasi and screenwriter Gabriel Sherman. Your politics–and your presidential choice in the forthcoming election–will almost certainly influence your response to the movie, or whether you even choose to watch it. However, there’s no denying the craft on display here.

Roy Cohn had already made a huge name for himself as a prosecutor in the 1951 Rosenberg espionage trial, as well as Senator Joseph McCarthy’s lieutenant in his anti-Communist crusade of the early 1950s. In the ensuing two decades, Cohn developed relationships with all kinds of movers and shakers in New York, including organized crime, the Catholic Church and New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. When the young Donald Trump requested–indeed, “begged”–that he help the Trump Organization survive a federal racial discrimination lawsuit, Cohn saw the kind of ambition worthy of a protégé. 

At the outset, we meet Trump as the frustrated second son of a powerful, autocratic father. He sympathizes with his older brother, Fred, Jr., even as their father berates him for rejecting the family business for a career as an airline pilot.  Donald himself has been relegated to tasks such as collecting the monthly rent from their tenants, often meeting hostility (and, sometimes, pans of hot water).  He dreams of escaping his father’s shadow. He has vision. He has plans. He still has an undefined future. Enter Roy Cohn, the fixer and mentor.

Gabriel Sherman, a special correspondent for Vanity Fair and the author of The Loudest Voice in the Room, a biography of the late Fox News President Roger Ailes, has crafted a smart, highly quotable script–almost too quotable. His extensive research, which includes biographies, public documents, court depositions and personal interviews, makes the dialogue seem almost reportorial at times, as opposed to conversational. For example, Cohn advises Trump on his scorched-earth approach to law and life: “Admit nothing; deny everything; claim victory and never admit defeat.” Later, he advises the ascending real estate entrepreneur that “Truth is a construct, a fiction.” (The actor Bruce Beaton, as Andy Warhol, may actually have the best line of all: “Making money is art.”)

What allows the overly straightforward dialogue to crackle are the performances from the leads. As Donald Trump, the Romanian-American actor Sebastian Stan (Captain America, I, Tonya) looks and sounds just enough like the former President to make him a plausible, aging, evolving character without descending into impersonation or parody. He has space to create. His vocal delivery and body language lend credence to this cinematic Trump. The impatience, savvy, vanity and casual indifference all register, even as he echoes his mentor’s declaration that “I’m a winner.”

As Roy Cohn, Jeremy Strong (Succession, Trial of the Chicago 7) gives an often astonishing performance. True to form, his version of method acting–an intense identification with his characters–informs all of his scenes. Lean, bronzed and increasingly gaunt, he exudes the qualities that made Cohn so feared, successful and reviled. He luxuriates in his celebrity while intimidating everyone around him, including the naive Trump, who finds himself in way over his head at Cohn’s lavish, drug-fueled and sexually-charged parties. Strong’s face practically has his mantra, “Attack, attack, attack” written all over it.

The Bulgarian-born actress Maria Bakalova shot to international fame with her Academy Award-nominated performance in the 2020 mockumentary Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. Here she plays it straight as Ivana Zelnicková, Donald Trump’s Czech-born first wife. Their courtship begins cute, rom-com style. Ivana has an active modeling career and a knack for business. After their marriage, her growing profile and involvement in the Trump empire leads to resentment and adultery on the part of her husband. Bakalova confidently portrays her character’s playfulness, intelligence, frustration and fear. In the movie’s most overtly disturbing scene, Trump sexually assaults her. In fact, she recounted that incident in her 1990 divorce deposition, then later substantially withdrew the claim.

The Iranian-Danish director Ali Abbasi (Holy Spider, Last of Us), working with Danish cinematographer Kasper Tuxen, has admirably recreated New York of the 1970s and early 1980s, a period of heightened criminal activity in the city. Most of the story, whether indoors or outdoors, takes place in a demi-light replete with hazy earth tones and a wealth of noirish mirrors and shadows. The kinetic camerawork helps emphasize the brittle relationships among the characters and the ever-changing power dynamics at play. The visuals seem reminiscent of classic New York-set films such as Midnight Cowboy (1969) and Taxi Driver (1976), with a certain grittiness akin to broadcast video of the period. Abbasi has also cited the social-climbing title character in Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon (1975) as a major influence. 

The Apprentice is ultimately a documentary-like horror story with an unmistakable point of view, which explains why it will never find a wide audience. (A graphic hair transplant scene suggests Frankenstein.) The filmmakers see Roy Cohn, who ultimately fell into disrepute, as a Machiavellian figure who studiously cultivated a nihilistic view of the world. Donald Trump, with whom he collaborated for nearly fifteen years, adopted his mentor’s cynical view of business, politics and personal relationships. 

As Cohn was dying of complications from HIV/AIDS (which, predictably, he refused to publicly acknowledge), Trump invited him to his recently-purchased Mar-a-Lago estate. By 1985, their relationship had changed. Trump now holds the upper hand. Cohn needs his help. The real estate mogul offers vapid words of praise at a birthday party, then gifts the disbarred attorney a pair of fake diamond cufflinks. In a final, deeply ironic moment, the future President tells an interviewer that he has risen to high celebrity and success strictly on the basis of “natural ability.” The Apprentice rests its case. If it fails to reveal much new about its protagonist, or even try to change any minds, it still succeeds as raw, undistilled cinematic storytelling.