A scene from ‘The Apprentice’

Review: ‘The Apprentice’ is insubstantial in light of current events

‘The Apprentice’ is a high-level account of the start of Donald Trump’s real estate career, noting his relationship with infamous attorney, Roy Cohn.

Everyone is comprised of their experiences, for better or worse. They effect actions and reactions, decision-making, opinions, outlooks, and anything else you may think of on any given day. Similarly, influential people in one’s life may mold those thoughts to match or parallel their own, shaping the person you become before forging your own path. Most people’s origin stories are not usually exciting or newsworthy, but still become a source of curiosity when related to public figures. The Apprentice recounts one of the early chapters in Donald Trump’s life, imagining inspirations for the man he is today.

Trump (Sebastian Stan) was the son of a wealthy real estate mogul, inheriting the throne when his older brother opted for a pilot’s career and eventually succumbed to alcoholism. Taking it upon himself to clear up the family’s legal troubles with one of their tenements, he recruits infamous attorney, Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), to represent the company and resolve the issue by any means necessary. Thus, Trump earns his father’s respect and the opportunity to realize his dream: building Trump Tower in New York City. Cohn took Trump under his wing to some degree, schooling him in cutthroat tactics and ruthless philosophies, producing a callous, greedy businessman with little regard for humanity.

The film follows the start of Trump’s real estate business in the 1970s and ‘80s. One of the picture’s opening scenes shows him driving his Cadillac to one of his father’s low-income apartment buildings to collect rent from overdue tenants. He’s clearly uncomfortable, likely with both the task and the lowly state of the clientele. Yet, pre-Cohn he displays a sense of compassion that conflicts with his ambition. Trump makes relentless romantic gestures to woo his first wife, Ivana (Maria Bakalova), with whom he’s immediately smitten. Although she eventually agrees to marry him, she proves shrewd in her review of their obligatory pre-nup. Some time after the birth of Don Jr., he claims to not even be attracted to her anymore — even though the woman he takes up with shares many of her physical traits.

Stan and Strong deliver unnervingly convincing performances. Strong portrays a man who made great efforts to exude unwavering strength and machismo, in spite of concealing his homosexuality, which could have destroyed his career. His character is brash and forthright, though time and illness would allow Trump to surpass his callousness. Stan not only captures Trump’s former appearance, but his personality that evolves from reserved determination to boisterous greed with the latter having a direct correlation on the level of compassion he shows others.

Director Ali Abbasi tries to dissect Trump’s origins, but his time in the public eye has made people all too familiar with his values and slogans. Whether his beliefs were imparted to him by Cohn, his father or some other source is of little concern as his actions have spoken louder than his endless stream of rants and tweets. Idioms about declaring you’ve won even when you haven’t and always going on the attack foretell the strategies he employed in his presidency and beyond. But overall, the picture is a shallow attempt to understand a man who literally plays by his own rules.

Director: Ali Abbasi
Starring: Sebastian Stan, Jeremy Strong and Maria Bakalova

Similar Posts

  • Review: ‘Clapboard Jungle’ goes deep behind the scenes of moviemaking (Includes first-hand account)

    It’s common knowledge the film industry is one of the toughest to penetrate and even more difficult to be successful. Of course, everyone’s measure of success is different, but in this case it can be boiled down to a few basic achievements: making a movie, getting said movie distributed, and people mostly liking it once they’ve been afforded the opportunity to see it. Now the method of all these things occurring is about as varied as the types of pictures people can make. But deep down there’s got to be some similarities; a common thread that drives everyone and bonds them in their pursuit. Clapboard Jungle is an exploration of independent filmmaking and the parallels of creators’ experiences.

  • Review: ‘In the Heart of the Sea’ stays afloat via its visual drama (Includes first-hand account)

    There are different types of skill, some of which are inherent or inherited and others that are learned or improved via practice. However the idea that these should be judged differently or affect the quality of the product generated is absurd. If anything, those who are forced to work harder may be more humble about their talents than those for whom they came naturally. It’s this type of meaningless distinction that divides the main characters in In the Heart of the Sea.

  • Review: The best reason to have a ‘Bad Reputation’ (Includes first-hand account)

    One of the great things about film in recent years is their increased (and somewhat begrudging) willingness to tell female stories. In some cases, it’s hard to believe they weren’t told before and in others it’s easy to see they couldn’t have been told correctly until now. But as others have said, seeing oneself on-screen is a powerful thing and women at the forefront have been grossly underrepresented in spite of comprising half the world’s population. That, of course, doesn’t mean they haven’t been doing great things — just that no one was sharing them with the masses. In Bad Reputation, audiences learn about Joan Jett‘s barrier-smashing music career.