150 Word Review: 'The Apprentice' (2024)
Deal with the devil
Donald Trump is a human being, unfortunately. He is larger-than-life to millions—a buffoon, a billionaire, a race-baiting con artist. But he's still just a man. In director Ali Abbasi's dramedy The Apprentice, Donald Trump is a young wannabe ladder climber in the falling-apart-New York City of the 1980s. He spends his nights trolling exclusive members-only clubs and his days collecting rent from tenants of his father's low-income apartments.
Eventually, Trump meets his future mentor, controversial right-wing lawyer Roy Cohn, tanned, cunning, loud, a virulently homophobic closeted homosexual. Cohn teaches Trump the dark arts of business and politics.
The Apprentice is a supervillain origin story featuring one of my favorite performances of the year. Sebastian Stan's Trump is wounded and insecure, an ambitious clod with daddy issues who slowly transforms into the bronze Caligula we know today. Jeremy Strong is too young as Cohn, but he plays an excellent reptile.
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The Apprentice is probably worth watching just for Sebastian Stan.
"...bronze Caligula."
Spot on.