The Apprentice (2024) - Review 

Rating: 4 out of 5

IRANIAN-Danish director Ali Abbasi tackles the rise of Donald Trump in suitably horrific fashion in The Apprentice, a film that predictably invoked the ire of the current US President.

Sebastian Stan (aka Marvel’s Winter Soldier) plays the man himself and really does get under the skin of the character, projecting his bullish and bullying nature as well as his over-sized ego, disdain for anyone he considers a loser and his mannerisms - the way he nods his head or wags a finger, or even fist pumps.

It’s not a caricature performance or one that errs towards pantomime villainy, as could have been a temptation. Rather, it’s pitched to showcase a monster on the rise: someone who needed a helping hand to achieve what he eventually becomes.

And in this we have the domineering figure of the highly connected and widely feared rightwing lawyer Roy Cohn (Succession’s Jeremy Strong), a heavy hitter in every sense, who aids and abets Trump to overcome the initial obstacles in his path and set him on his way.

It is Cohn who imparts Trump with the will to win at all costs, to portray truth as controllable and flexible and to never admit defeat - to spin everything as a victory. It is Cohn, too, who offers many of Trump’s early connections, as well as Cohn who imbues Trump with his America first policy.

Cohn is a monster every bit as terrifying as Trump: a man with few friends, but plenty of contacts, who isn’t afraid to betray and backstab to get what he wants.

Strong embodies him with a cold, calculated demeanour: an attack dog spirit that lays waste to anyone or anything standing on his way.

After the two meet in a New York club, Cohn quickly takes Trump under his wing, helping his overbearing father (Martin Donovan) overcome a legal case involving the exploitation of black residents at his housing block, before helping Donald himself take over a derelict hotel in the blighted no man’s land of Manhattan’s Midtown.

Reality check: Cohn did represent Trump in a case brought forward by the Department of Justice in 1973 that argued that Trump's father's real-estate company, Trump Management, had discriminated against Black tenancy applicants.

And, as the film depicts, Trump was granted an "unprecedented contract" from the city: a 40-year tax abatement for the building which, according to the New York Times, has cost New York City $360 million in forgiven or uncollected taxes.

Thereafter, Trump continues to grow as a real estate magnet, brokering ever more ambitious and expensive deals both inside and outside of New York (his reach extends to Atlantic City), with Cohn continually greasing the wheels until, eventually, he finds himself expendable (largely due to failing health, as the promiscuous Cohn died of Aids despite insisting he had liver cancer).

In many ways, Abbasi’s film plays out like many a cautionary tale about power and how it corrupts - albeit with the added realisation that much of what you’re watching is real. The film does let audiences know that some of the events they're about to see have been "fictionalized for dramatic purposes”.

In real life Trump - who is notoriously litigious - did get his lawyers to send an unsuccessful cease and desist letter to the film’s producers, before calling out the movie on his website as a “disgusting hatchet job”.

But thus far, the film hasn’t been subject to any successful legal challenges, which strengths the case for some of its more provocative and controversial elements: most notably the portrayal of Trump as a rapist.

In a particularly difficult scene, Trump is seen to sexually assault his then wife, the Czech model Ivana Zelníčková - a claim that Ivana, who died in 2022, made in a 1990 divorce deposition (but which she later disavowed the claim when it was published in Harry Hurt III's 1993 book, The Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump.

Abbasi’s film therefore achieves what it set out to: to expose the tawdry, corrupt rise of its primary subject.

It does so in a way that also reminded me of Al Pacino’s Scarface, which in itself depicted the corruption of the American Dream in Reagan era 80s America.

The Apprentice is set in both the 70s and the 80s, beginning with the fall of Nixon but including the capitalist rallying call of the Reagan presidency. And, like Tony Montana, both Cohn and Trump ride the capitalist wave for all it’s worth, becoming consumed by it.

Where Montana was an out and out criminal, however, Cohn and Trump were cut from a different cloth - men who describe themselves as patriots, but who were driven by self interest. For Cohn, there was some kind of comeuppance. Trump, however, continues to grow in stature and power, driven by Cohn’s three rules: No 1: attack, attack, attack. No 2: admit nothing, deny everything. No 3: always claim victory, never admit defeat.

The Apprentice is an ominous film in many ways. It lands its punches but the man marches on regardless. It’s sobering stuff.