I understand why people may be less inclined to check out this film right now. All of the warnings have been there for decades, and we've had even more time to watch Donald Trump showcase his incompetence, pettiness, and inhumanity over the past few years, but The Apprentice is a surprisingly fantastic watch, not just because it reminds us all of the fact that nothing the snake-oil salesman who bagged himself a return trip to the White House says or does nowadays is new. He's just repeating from a playbook that he's been using for most of the past half century, and that playbook was written for him by Roy Cohn.
While we all know the Donald Trump of today as a convicted felon, a bully who has been found guilty of sexual abuse, and someone who has allegedly been recruited as a Russian asset way back in the 1980s (according to a couple of different sources), he was once just a pathetic young man who wanted to impress his parents and be one of the rich people that others become desperate to spend time with. He already had his narcissism in place, and a weak nature that would see him beg for help from people until he could get enough leverage to keep his own place at the big table, but he wasn't yet the great monster that he is today. Enter Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong). Cohn meets Donald Trump (played here by Sebastian Stan) in the 1970s, and they form a friendship and business relationship that basically shows Donald how to keep getting his way throughout his entire life. Attack, deny everything, and claim any loss as a victory. This is a Frankenstein tale, but there are many Victor Frankensteins here, and just as many monsters, each working to reconstruct the other in different ways.
Although this is the second feature film written by Gabriel Sherman, I have decided not to hold the awfulness of Independence Day: Resurgence against him. This is so good that I absolutely forgive him, and look forward to whatever he's got lined up for future projects. It helps that director Ali Abbasi is at the helm, someone who has spent the past decade making features that range from very good to absolutely superb (I encourage everyone to also check out Border and Holy Spider). Abbasi knows how to handle material that dances between light and extreme darkness, and he puts that skill to very good use here. He also owes a huge thank you to those who helped to cast the film.
Stan is absolutely brilliant in a role that could have easily been mishandled. He somehow avoids being a clown who becomes a complete villain, although his performance is shaded with both. Nothing is shown here to excuse the behaviour of Donald, but there's a fascinating look at how some of his attitudes were shaped and how he would so often look up to, and put on a pedestal, people who many of us would view as absolute scumbags. Strong has an absolute blast playing one of the biggest scumbags, someone so monstrous that he initially makes little Donnie look like a pussycat, but it's interesting that this year saw both Strong and Kieran Culkin receive a lot of praise for film performances that weren't really too far removed from the personalities they had nurtured throughout five seasons of the superb Succession. Martin Donovan and Catherine McNally are the elder Trumps, Charlie Carrick is the lost brother, and Maria Bakalova adds to her impressive body of work with a captivating portrayal of Ivana.
Although we have much more recent history to learn from, people should really watch this to be reminded of just how much time Donald Trump has spent being an inexorably unpleasant and greedy narcissist who will do anything for a bit of power to wield against others. I doubt this will reach the right people, anyone choosing to watch it will probably not be a member of the bizarre cult he has developed in the past decade, but if there's a chance that even one of those people he managed to confound with his tired razzle dazzle routine can have their blinkers removed, or at least slightly damaged, then that would be a huge bonus. Mind you, the fact that it is out in the world, and making the small-minded bully angry and unable to do anything about it, is just as much of a bonus.
8/10
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