The Apprentice only confirms the obvious: Donald Trump is the worst, and Jeremy Strong is the best

The Apprentice, a look at the friendship between attorney Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) and former/future U.S. President Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan), opens with potential. The impish and fragile Trump, at the dawn of his “career” as his father’s most loyal rent-collecting lackey, finds the trajectory of his dreams skyrocketing as he joins forces with the cut-throat Roy Cohn.

Cinematographer Kasper Tuxen (The Worst Person in the World) captures a sense of 1970s decay by shooting on an Alexa 35 equipped with 16mm lenses to mimic the look of the era. Few films using digital to replicate film have been so impactful. Scenes feel crowded, and the use of Zoom evokes a reportage style emblematic of the era. The textures are raw and saturated. It’s a gorgeous facsimile of a low point in New York City (though Toronto standing in for the Big Apple, as it is here, has to be another one). 

The ugliness of the characters feels decadent in these moments. Trump seems pathetic, though wistful; easily manipulated but with a certain tenderness. It’s a credit to the film that they’re able to, at least briefly, humanize him without offering him forgiveness. The intelligence of the approach to the performance and the writing of Trump and Cohn lies in rendering their struggle so tactile and tender that it only deepens the depths of their depravity. Yet, this duality quickly slips away. As Trump gains power, the fragility morphs into vanity and the film begins to lose momentum, leaning on tired clichés and memes. 

It’s not that the movie doesn’t unveil to the world the true Donald Trump; he’s a petty, abusive and entitled asshole. By the time he’s found some measure of success, he’s fairly irredeemable as a public figure. Yet the film seems to flounder in why his story needs to be told on the big screen. The undertaking feels like a finger-wagging exercise that presents no new information and merely confirms to us what we already know about the man. There’s very little insight into the world that shaped him and how, despite his singular monstrosity, he’s emblematic of a class of American exceptionalism and greed.

The film’s greatest strength lies in its aesthetic approach. Once we enter the era of the videotape, the movie abandons the faux-16mm in favour of the flatness of video. It’s an inspired choice that draws the audience into the world of Trump as he becomes a star. The film looks fantastic. The use of different formats similarly underlines the sheer breadth of Trump’s influence on the world, and how long people have known he was a conniving, manipulative bully. 

But, as we enter Trump’s first wave of public fame, the movie seems to abandon any sense of insight or nuance as we go through the greatest hits of painful humiliations, betrayals and crimes. Almost leaning into a full horror film, The Apprentice doesn’t shy away from his sexual assault of his ex-wife Ivana (played with spectacular gusto by Maria Bakalova) and a graphic scalp reduction and lipo scene. These moments are appropriately ugly, but in the era of image and information over-saturation, they somehow only feel like noise. The film doesn’t have enough guts or insight to contextualize them in a way that has any real impact.

In the project of unveiling the darker side of the American experience, it’s increasingly clear that fiction becomes a better avenue for crawling under people’s skin. There is no shortage of films that handle similar material with more insight, revealing more about who Trump is than any biopic could. Much of Martin Scorsese’s filmography from the past 30 years offers a better insight into American corruption and rot than The Apprentice. The collective works of Bret Easton Ellis offer a more pointed and complex satire on the strain of wealth-infused violence that cannibalizes American life. Look no further than Trump’s supposed favourite film, Citizen Kane (which is included as a poster on the wall in this film), as a scathing indictment of a megalomaniac whose ambitions squeeze out his humanity until he’s left alone and dying in his cavernous mansion. The biopic, as a genre, feels too limited to explain how a man like Trump could ever become president of the United States. 

Sebastian Stan is an interesting actor and does his best with the material. Particularly in the earlier scenes, he softens the Trumpisms, allowing them to emerge in sharper focus as Trump becomes emboldened by his greed and the spotlight. It’s a thankless role and, unfortunately, is only worth praising in that it’s not a total trainwreck. Jeremy Strong, on the other hand, gives a powerhouse performance. Its strangeness and weight overpowers the film completely as he dominates every frame he’s in. If anything, The Apprentice confirms that Strong truly is one of our greatest working actors.

Overall, the movie has some interesting moments but overall can’t quite overcome the fact that it feels like bringing a knife to a gunfight. Attacking or making sense of Trump’s character clearly has very little impact on the people who support him. The movie doesn’t do quite enough to suggest why that is, preferring instead to add to the pile-on — which may be cathartic for some, but is an ultimately empty exercise in futility. ■

The Apprentice opens in Montreal theatres on Friday, Oct. 11.

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