“There he is, the boy with the golden hair.”
There is nobody with more impressions to their name than Donald J Trump, allowing maybe for Dracula. From SNL guest stars to your drunk uncle talking politics at dinner, Trump’s cartoon catchphrases and buffoonish cadence have proven irresistible for as long as he’s been in the public eye. Consequently, projects like The Apprentice face a difficult question; is there a deeper truth to be found in this man, beyond the deranged bravado and increasingly artificial appearance? It’s not clear what, if anything, writer Gabriel Sherman and director Ali Abbasi really find in their controversial new biopic, but in the end that may well be the point.
When we first meet Sebastian Stan’s Trump, he is walking idly through the streets of 1970s Manhattan, a blank slate speaking always in plain English and taught formalities. Stan plays him here with a psychology and charisma best described as alien, a man without values or opinions who cannot bring himself to call Anthony Salerno by his nickname “Fat Tony” no matter how hard he’s pushed. It is striking how little resemblance he bares here to the future President, which makes all the richer Jeremy Strong’s thunderous debut as prosecutor Roy Cohn, a fully formed proto-Trump who is described by all, even his protege, as “the devil”.
Cohn’s decision to mentor Trump gives shape to the film, mixing set-pieces of seedy backroom bribery and blackmail with more overtly comic duologues. One particularly heavy-handed case of the latter sees Cohn outline his “three rules” for life, which viewers will recognise as the tenets that will one day empower Trump to win and then contest subsequent elections. In the spirit of the man, who through Cohn learns to speak at all times in vacuous, stream-of-consciousness non-sequiturs, The Apprentice is a relentlessly obvious film, and each viewer’s mileage will likely vary on the many winks to presidencies, slogans and orange-tinted skin along the way.
What should prove less divisive are the performances from Stan and Strong, whose chemistry has an appropriately lecherous feel. The film never forgets that its subjects are monsters, which makes the process of watching the young drain his power, persona and lifeblood from the older into a fascinating karmic quandary. Cohn’s affection for “the kid” is palpable, as he bullies his way through any number of blood-boiling deals in the same way a schoolboy might shoplift for attention, while Stan’s vapidity leaves you squinting to find some semblance of humanity. Regardless of how many judges they bend or towers they build, Abbasi and his leading men keep us at all times rooted in the pitiful smallness of the men who made it happen.
This is the key to making The Apprentice work as well as it does. With an exaggerated style aping Strong’s alma mater Succession and an appropriately brash jukebox soundtrack, the origin story of Donald Trump is here shown to be a superficial and largely unimpressive event. In a late-film sequence alluding broadly to The Godfather, a tragic loss is intercut with a series of grotesque liposuction and hair transplant surgeries, making clear in terms even the former President can understand that Abbasi is less interested in finding a soul for Donald Trump than in identifying the makers behind the monster. It’s a testament to the length of that list then, that by the end of the film it feels like we’re just getting started.
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