The Apprentice: A chilling origins story
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8David Farnor | On 02, Feb 2025
Director: Ali Abbasi
Cast: Sebastian Stan, Jeremy Strong, Maria Bakalova, Martin Donovan
Certificate: 15
Attack, attack, attack. Admit nothing, deny everything. No matter what, claim victory and never admit defeat. Those are the three rules Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) lives by. The Apprentice sees them passed on to his ambitious protege, Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan), who doesn’t just take them on board but turns them into a way of life.
Ali Abbasi’s pointedly titled drama hones in on that formative relationship in the life of the young Donald Trump. The second son of a father who dismisses him and leaves him collecting rent from tenants, it charts his ambitious drive to become somebody – eclipsing his father’s Trump Village housing complex with his own vision of what will eventually be Trump Tower. From Coney Island to Manhattan.
The film deftly delves into the mindset of “Donnie”, a guy who desperately wants to be a winner, but shrewdly frames him as a constant learner, an impressionable number two who fashions his whole identity around someone else’s example. That turns this biopic into something that’s at once empathetic, but never sympathetic or flattering.
Sebastian Stan is impeccable as the bullish, blustering, bullying would-be shark. He finds humanity and weakness behind the confident facade that we slowly see being assembled. While there’s apparently sincere affection for his mentor and his first wife, Ivana (the superb Maria Bakalova), Stan’s performance also doesn’t shirk away from the cruelty shown to both.
He’s supported by a flawless Jeremy Strong, who is at once vulnerable and tyrannical – he moves from tormenting others over the phone with relentlessly focused resentment to quietly suffering in private without admitting it. He’s a closeted homosexual who is at once an ally of Senator McCarthy and a victim of his own public persona.
Zipping along with a stylish period soundtrack, slightly scuzzy visuals and the odd flash of graphic liposuction and scalp-reduction procedures, the result is a gripping and timely drama that explores how one man can build his own truth. It’s a rounded, thoughtful and darkly plausible portrait, acted out with award-worthy conviction.