APPRENTICE, THE
(director: Ali Abassi; screenwriter: Gabriel Sherman; cinematographer: Kasper Tuxen; editors: Olivia Neergaard-Holm, Ilivier Bugge Coutté; music: David Holmes, Brian Irvine, Martin Dirkov; cast: Sebastian Stan (Donald Trump), Jeremy Strong (Roy Cohn), Maria Bakalova (Ivana Trump), Martin Donovan (Fred Trump), Catherine McNally (Mary Anne Trump), Charlie Carrick (Freddy Trump), Ben Sullivan (Russell Eldridge), Mark Rendall (Roger Stone), Joe Pingue (Fat Tony Salerno), Jim Monaco (Jim Formicola), Bruce Beaton (Andy Warhol), Ian D. Clark (Ed Koch), Valerie O’Connor (Rona Barrett); Runtime: 120; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Daniel Bekerman, Jacob Jarek, Ruth Treacy, Julianne Forde, Louis Tisné, Ali Abbasi; Profile Pictures; 2024-USA/Denmark/Ireland/Canada)
“A cheesy TV-styled movie that has nothing to do with the Donald’s reality show on NBC.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
The Iranian director Ali Abassi (“Border”/”Shelley”) and the political journalist screenwriter Gabriel Sherman in their factual biopic depict Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan) as an amoral narcissist, a crooked upstart businessman, a rapist (the film’s most controversial scene, where he rapes his first wife Ivana (Maria Bakalova), and as a right-wing fascistic political predator.
It’s a cheesy TV-styled movie that has nothing to do with the Donald’s reality show on NBC, but has everything to do with the cynicism and corruption sweeping across America from the Nixon days in the 1970s to the present.
We catch the sleazy Donald as a manipulative landlord, a disciple for his despotic and racist real estate father Fred (Martin Donovan) and as a tabloid hedonist celebrity, as he begins to flex his ugliness in the 1970s while mentored by Nixon’s tainted in the closet homo adviser, the obnoxious lying scum-bag lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), who impressed on him to never admit defeat even if it’s obvious he lost (think of the last presidential election with Biden).
The loathsome Fred operates in Queens, collecting rent from tenants who can’t stand the landlord from hell, while the family business faces a civil rights suit over violations of the Fair Housing Act, stemming from Fred’s discrimination policies against Black prospective tenants.
Meanwhile the loathsome Donald builds his real estate empire in Manhattan through crooked means.
Nothing new is revealed in this tiresome biopic on the revolting bigoted Donald, as all the negativity about him just seems to divide the country and won’t faze his MAGA supporters.
It played at the Cannes Film Festival.
REVIEWED ON 5/25/2024 GRADE: B