‘Government is for losers’ says the young Trump in solid bio-pic
Standout performances by the lead actors make this Donald Trump biopic worth watching in the lead up to the US election.
Early in The Apprentice, a young New Yorker considered as handsome as Robert Redford, first by The New York Times, then by himself, rings the doorbell on a Manhattan building and says his name.
“Donald who?’’ comes the reply.
It’s hard to believe in October 2024, a month before Donald Trump asks the American people to return him to the White House, but in the 1970s he was a relative unknown toiling in the shadow of his businessman father Fred Trump, whose middle name was Christ.
The future 45th American president (well captured by Sebastian Stan) goes from door-to-door in apartment buildings owned by his father, asking tenants for the rent. One throws a pot of boiling water at him. It misses. Trump checks his hair.
This life in the background changes after that doorbell press. Trump meets and hires Roy Cohn (a must-watch Jeremy Strong), the McCarthy era lawyer who sent Soviet spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to the electric chair. He discusses the “communist kikes” at one point and it is unsettling.
Trump has plans that far exceed his father’s but needs to get the bureaucracy — mainly the tax man — off his back. He wants to build a luxury hotel on dilapidated 42nd street, the edifice now known as the Grand Hyatt, and make New York great again.
This movie, directed by Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi and written by American journalist Gabriel Sherman, unfolds in two parts. First, Trump’s apprenticeship under Cohn, who takes him under his batlike wing, and second, his rapid development into a “killer”, his own word, who doesn’t need Cohn or his father (Martin Donovan) or anyone else.
The first half is the best, particularly for the unnerving performance of Strong, best-known for the 2018-2023 television series Succession. He tells Donald the “three rules of winning”: Attack, attack, attack; admit nothing, deny everything; and, the most important one, which the apprentice followed after the 2000 presidential election, claim victory and never, never admit defeat.
Cohn introduces Trump to the top end of town, where he chats with the likes of Andy Warhol, in a comic moment, and Rupert Murdoch. He also meets Czech-born model Ivana Zelnickova (Oscar nominee Maria Bakalova), who he pursues and marries in 1977.
Whether this young Trump is true-to-life is perhaps a question only Trump can answer. His father is dead, as are Ivana and Cohn.
Stan, the Winter Soldier in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, shows his acting chops with a nuanced performance that makes the 30-year-old Trump almost likeable.
He’s nervous and anxious, especially when he realises Cohn’s main legal weapon is blackmail. “You have to be willing to do anything to anyone to win,’’ Cohn tells his apprentice.
The second half, which takes us towards the 1980s, the AIDS epidemic and Ronald Reagan’s presidency, is less interesting.
Trump is arrogant, dismissive of his friends and relatives and cruel to Ivana. Whether this is true-to-life is something on which people will have different opinions.
This is a solid film that’s worth watching in the lead-up to the presidential election. The performances — of Stan, Strong and Bakalova — are first rate.
When the apprentice Trump shows he is uncomfortable with how Cohn operates, the lawyer tells him that “truth is malleable” and “you create our own reality”. Soon after, Trump, making headlines for his real estate deals, is asked on a TV show whether he might run for office. He replies, “Government is for losers. I know politicians and most of them are as dumb as a rock.”
The Apprentice (MA15+)
120 minutes
In cinemas
★★★
