Movie Review: "The Apprentice" Fails To Make Biopics Great Again
4/12 ForReel Score | 1.5/5 Stars
Let’s be clear about this: come November 2024, I do not plan on voting for Donald Trump to be the United States president. And before you jump to conclusions on what that might imply about my political leanings, I also do not intend to vote for Kamala Harris either. I recognize it can be unsavory to bring personal politics into film criticism, but I for a film so rooted in the current events - a less-than-glamorous biopic of a Presidential candidate conveniently timed to release just ahead of this year’s Presidential election - I felt compelled to demonstrate that the climate of current events and politics has less bearing on my perspective of The Apprentice than you might assume.
The details of my political preferences are a topic for a different platform, but there is one bi-partisan fact most of us can acknowledge: Donald Trump has proven to be a polarizing public figure. He surrounds himself with people he can leverage. He’s proficient at making promises. And while “eloquent” isn’t the word I’d use to describe his public speaking, the man sure knows how to talk his way into making himself the hero of any conversation. Thwarting the efforts of numerous lawsuits, criminal indictments, and the relentless judgment from the court of public opinion, some might say Trump has become too big to fail. But, how did he come to amass so much power?
That brings us to the premise of The Apprentice.
Cleverly named after Trump’s own reality TV show (which I admittedly found thoroughly enjoyable back in the day before politics fell on Trump’s resume), The Apprentice views Trump (played by Sebastian Stan, Fresh) as the intern-in-training, so to speak. In an uphill battle to close a deal to convert a downtown New York skyscraper into a luxury hotel, Trump enlists the guidance of a savvy lawyer named Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong, Succession) to leverage and exploit the loopholes of business and make this improbable deal happen. Each setback is just a challenge to promise his way out of, and each victory dials Trump’s ego up until eventually, he is crafted into the selfish and vindictive persona he’s come to be known for.
By the time the credits began to roll, I had come to a firm conclusion about The Apprentice: this is an origin story I really didn’t need. Depicting Trump as an ambitious, wide-eyed entrepreneur turned scoundrel lacks the nuance that a better thought out, less pandering script might’ve wielded more proficiently. Despite having a few good components to work with in the script, The Apprentice seems to get in its own way with its single-minded objective to paint Trump in as negative of a light as possible.
But when it comes to depicting Trump, Sebastian Stan certainly fulfills the assignment he’s given. Trump impressions are as caricature now as Elvis Pressley or Michael Jackson impersonators, but Stan resists the urge to go overboard with it, starting the character off as a vaguely recognizable version of Donald Trump then dialing up the “Trumpisms” as the narrative progresses. The MPV of the cast, however, is Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn. With the monotonous tone and the I’ve-got-it-all-in-the-bag attitude many of us loved to hate in Succession, he is perfectly casted for this role as his character tries to maintain his advantages but ultimately gets upstaged by the circumstances of life.
In Cohn and his B-plot narrative, we have a much more interesting antihero story that reflects glimmers of Better Call Saul. I would be elated about a “Better Call Cohn” version of The Apprentice, where Cohn is the protagonist and the narrative highlights the corruption of New York business and politics as a whole - Cohn doing his part to pull strings while Trump is a growing player whose potential threatens to surpass Cohn’s mentorship.
But I digress. The Apprentice is nowhere near that creative. If you are an avid Trump supporter, this is just not your movie. If you despise Trump, grab your church robe and join the choir The Apprentice is preaching to. And if you find yourself somewhere in the middle, you’ll likely remain firmly planted in the no-mans-land of the debate. The Apprentice is not meant to be a particularly revelatory, thought provoking, or constructively critical perspective of the former President before he was a President. It’s a pretty ho-hum take on the development of a villain, and I strongly wish the film had found a loophole in that narrative structure to leverage and exploit.
Acting/Casting - 2 | Visual Effects and Editing - 1 | Story and Message - 0 | Entertainment Value - 1 | Music Score and Soundtrack - 0 | Reviewer’s Preference - 0 | What does this mean?