Fail to the chief
I had drafted a thousand-word spiel about why The Apprentice is the exact opposite of the film I am excited to watch, but I don’t think you really need me to explain it. It’s obvious. In fact, Donald Trump is pretty much the reason that I started The Goods in 2020 — first as a podcast with my friend Brian, who pitched the title and concept of “The Goods” when I asked if he wanted to start a movie reviews podcast (now nearing its 200th episode), then a couple years later as the review site you’re reading right now. I was simply so burnt out on headlines and political discourse after four years of doomscrolling and some frustrating attempts to get involved in local politics that I locked in on cinema as the object of my mental bandwidth. I haven’t looked back.
Most people didn’t start a podcast and review site just to get their mind off of Trump, but I don’t think I’m unusual in not wanting to see The Apprentice because of its subject. And that’s its fundamental problem. Who is the target audience for this? It’s a film that simultaneously degrades and provides a backdrop of humanity to the 45th/47th President. Director Ali Abbasi and scriptwriter Gabriel Sherman and this entire team built the film on the presumption that current Trump is a barely human monster, thus alienating the certified red-hats. But the film shows how he got there with something bordering on sympathy at the film’s start, thus ticking off the haters. (Of course, the opening dilemma that nearly breaks Trump before he gets started is a major lawsuit against his family about systemic racial discrimination, so it’s not exactly painting him as a plucky hero.) So who would want to spend 90 minutes hanging with Trump, reliving his slide to villainy? Nobody wins.
I probably would have skipped The Apprentice entirely if not for the two Oscar nominations. I had the faintest tickle of curiosity — I guess morbid curiosity — but not enough that I would have excitedly watched the film in this timeline’s 2025 otherwise. (If Trump had lost in 2024, this movie would play a lot better, almost as catharsis; a dissection of a toxic capitalistic specimen that reflected and weaponized America’s obsession with exceptionalism, like a bad bout of food poisoning we’re recovering from. Alas.)
And credit where it’s due: damn if The Apprentice isn’t watchable, almost compulsively so. It doesn’t get so far as, e.g., The Social Network in both higher-plane visual storytelling and commenting on a tide change in America. It’s more like a lesser BlackBerry, an oddly-flavored portrait that’s well-acted and incisive enough to be a fun watch… if not, you know, for the context. Context matters, and The Apprentice does not transcend it. Even when I was enjoying what was on the screen in front of me, I still felt icky and bummed, almost exploited. Maybe you will be different; maybe you are one of the diminishing few capable of seeing the president with ambivalence, or else you find the film charming or barbed enough in a vacuum to slough that baggage of its shoulders, but I could not get there.
The lead performances really are quite strong. Sebastian Stan is all-in as Trump, not capturing the essence of the President (who could dare to do so?) but instead focusing on the transformation. Stan’s Trump conveys as a square-jawed socialite early in the film, a normal billionaire doofus, only for Trumpiness to slowly peer out of the cracks like a Lovecraftian nightmare. As the runtime goes, that normalcy vanishes. You’ll get a shiver when he says a certain word in a familiar tone or makes a gesture that’s a perfected facsimile of studying footage of the narcissist’s interviews.
I like Jeremy Strong even more as Roy Cohn. He does what most biopic performances claim to do, but actually pulls it off: Evoking the character in a mannered impression, but still carrying as a unique little piece of life. (After heaping praise on Kieran Culkin in my A Real Pain review, I feel I’m eating crow; maybe Strong is the most profound talent from Succession.) He makes the notoriously hate-worthy American figure likable; at moments, even sympathetic. Yet Strong never threatens to sand Cohn’s edges down; the character is still a villain rather than an anti-hero.
The film has some peculiar flavors in its cinematography and direction. Abbasi evokes ‘80s premium cable reruns trash with a TV-frame aspect ratio, intense film grain, and slightly nauseating color grading. His direction is so odd; at times using the gritty handheld footage aesthetic of 2000s indie cinema, and at other times envisioning Trump’s descent as a miniature gangster epic. It creates an odd tension that doesn’t quite resolve in a satisfying way; you’d not be wrong in calling it “ugly” or “misguided.” But I didn’t hate the look at all. It sets a distinct, astringent flavor that kinda matches the pitch of the material.
What The Apprentice most made me think of was Batman Begins. It has the same weird dichotomy of tones. It pursues the same mission of explaining how its subject’s iconography and “mythology” formed, almost organically. We get a scene where a character explains the art of making a deal; Trump’s eyes twinkle. Later, his ears perk up when he hears someone describe making America great again. And if you’re wondering why he’s so weird and defensive about his grotesque hair, The Apprentice offers an explanation: it was Ivana’s (Maria Bakalova) angle of attack when their marriage started falling apart. These beats are goofy, all kinds of tacky, and, depending on your political disposition, sickening to sit through. (I’m the latter, as you’ve surely detected.) But at least it’s cheeky!
In another universe, I’d quite like Abbasi’s take on the moral spiral/financial ascent of a greedy capitalist as the mirror for our own society’s decay. I get the powerful sense that he’s making the exact film he wants to, and a lot of it works. But I just can’t say that The Apprentice is a success when it never fully escapes the cacophony of alarm bells set off by its premise.
Is It Good?
Nearly Good (4/8)
Dan is the founder and head critic of The Goods. Follow Dan on Letterboxd. Join the Discord for updates and discussion.
2 replies on “The Apprentice (2024)”
“Who is the target audience for this? It’s a film that simultaneously degrades and provides a backdrop of humanity to the 45th/47th President.”
So you’re saying Captain America 4 isn’t going to do well.
They should’ve just gone all the way and called him “Orange Hulk”