TEXAS, USA — The first time we see Sebastian Stan at a loss for words in “The Apprentice,” in which he plays a young Donald Trump still charting his path through the hotel industry and not yet the White House’s halls, is when the young Czech model he’s attracted to insists she loves her boyfriend. She simply can’t entertain a date with the blond-haired real estate heir. Donald is left speechless. By now he’s almost fully become the loquacious, big-talking personality who can’t afford not to make a deal before bedtime, but he can’t devise a retort at the mention of love; after all, “The Apprentice” does paint Fred Trump (Martin Donovan) as a father who might not have loved his children so much as pitted them against each other to keep the family’s name in the headlines. Love? No, there’s no compromising with that. Not when Donald can’t compute what he’s up against.
That Czech woman is Ivana Marie Zelníčková (Maria Bakalova), soon to be Ivana Trump, so suffice to say he will overcome anyway. Even love, it turns out, can’t withstand the sheer force of will that was Donald Trump in the 1970s—someone who never relinquished, never admitted defeat, never stopped fighting for what he wanted.
Unfolding over 15 or so years, “The Apprentice” shows how the future Republican Party mobilizer learned those lessons from swashbuckling attorney Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), and the film, for better or for worse, syncs up with that battle strategy. Director Ali Abbasi has made a grim coming-of-age movie, one set against the backdrop of penthouses rather than treehouses. All the other elements of that subgenre are here: questionable influences, familial negligence, and the evolution of a protagonist who, by movie’s end, has embraced a way of navigating the world that suits him best. “The Apprentice” concludes at a point still decades away from when Donald would announce his first presidential run, but by then it’s obvious how the stakes of Cohn’s foundational teachings will have swelled when embraced by who would become one of the most important world figures of the 21st century.
Of course even Ivana's eventual marriage to Donald's will also be planned like a transaction. Bakalova sells the internal straining between knowing she has to walk away but somehow finding herself in his lap regardless, cementing and also teasing the reach of his showmanship.
The blast of punk-rock music and cinematic chaos that opens it notwithstanding, "The Apprentice" isn’t quite sex, drugs and hotel deals. Rather, Abbasi's movie is a Gothic-inflected journey where interior environments are so grimly lit it’s like the upper-upper-upper-class denizens don’t want us to notice the rot. And the debut of Donald's Grand Hyatt Hotel, which marked his first real headline-making move in the city, while ostensibly a joyous red-carpet occasion, feels tragic in its scale of empty significance. But Abbasi’s most compelling trick reflects Donald’s growing play-it-up-for-the-cameras ethos: Starting about halfway, movie takes on an increasingly grainy aesthetic making the whole thing look like it might have on TV in the ‘80s, in danger of falling into the disruption of full-on static the movie makes Donald's ambitions out to be.
What’s less clear is what we should make of the movie’s on-rails narrative, which dilutes the drama and extends the runtime even as it accentuates the sense of menace apparent in the explosiveness of the performance and volatile swells of Kasper Tuxen’s musical score. Abbasi’s work has grown increasingly and disappointingly obvious since his fantastical immigration allegory “Border,” and “The Apprentice” (penned by “Independence Day: Resurgence” writer Gabriel Sherman) rarely strives to rise above rote dramatization of history. The opening sees a fresh-faced Donald excitedly pointing out the high-rollers at a club where he’s just become a member. “Why are you so obsessed with these people?” his date asks, ever so briefly bringing to mind the famous line of questioning that kicks off “The Social Network.” Sherman and Abbasi never really offer up their own compelling answer.
“The Apprentice” instead settles into a traditional master-and-padawan narrative centered on Donald and Roy, the milestone moments that came of their partnership and the predictable precariousness that defined their relationship as a result. The idea – betrayed as much by the movie’s release date, less than a month before Election Day, as anything else – is to show how Trump has been honing his survivalist instincts for years, instincts handed down to him by someone who died of AIDS long before he would see them reach the Oval Office.
But the best manifestation of those instincts still reside with Roy, and with Strong’s eerie, creature-like portrayal of the scorched-earth attorney. Here he makes every syllable sound like a taunt, every stare a staredown, and the ceaseless bobbing of his head indicates both someone constantly in his groove and foreshadowing the downfall to come. Roy says early on, at a dinnertime speech, that he loves America. What’s evident is that what he really loves is having his way with her. Donald will learn that lesson for himself soon enough.
In case you’re wondering, there’s no mistaking Donald’s rise for a hero’s story in Abbasi’s movie, though you’d be right to question to what extent Abbasi is interested in those who get flattened on his way to the top—and, by extension, what Donald thinks about the parts of himself he’s losing when he’s winning at everything else. When a major victory in New York City Hall comes at the expense of the city’s poor, the movie only pays lip service. "The Apprentice" seethes, to be sure, but that’s hardly the same thing as baring its teeth.
"The Apprentice" is now in theaters. It's rated R for sexual content, some graphic nudity, language, sexual assault and drug use. Runtime: 2 hours, 2 minutes.
Directed by Ali Abbasi; written by Gabriel Sherman
Starring Sebastian Stan, Jeremy Strong, Maria Bakalova, Martin Donovan
2024
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