The Succession star chills as US lawyer Roy Cohn opposite Sebastian Stan as his grasping protege Donald Trump in Ali Abbasi’s intriguing drama
It’s not quite an ultra-villain origin story. But nor is Iranian-Danish director Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice in any way a flattering depiction of its subject, the young(ish) Donald Trump (a horribly convincing Sebastian Stan). The film follows Trump’s early journey, starting as “Little Donnie”, the browbeaten second son of an overbearing father who scoffs that his boy “needs all the help he can get”. But, as the film tells it, the young Donald finds a second father figure in the well-connected and widely feared rightwing lawyer Roy Cohn (Succession star Jeremy Strong, bringing his trademark unblinking gimlet intensity to the performance, with chilling effect). The lessons learned from his mentor – chicanery, bluster, vanity and the need to win at all costs – shaped the Trump we know today.
It would have been easy to make Trump into a monster or a ridiculous figure of fun, and since Abbasi, who previously made the Iranian serial killer movie Holy Spider, isn’t known for his subtlety, it’s surprising and even a little disappointing that The Apprentice doesn’t go all in on the grotesque and extreme aspects of the Trumpian evolution. But it does show a side of the former US president that, you suspect, he would prefer not to be seen. This Trump is an unexpectedly weak and malleable figure; an impressionable man who mistakes bullying for strength and views power as something to be weaponised. Not surprisingly, Trump is irked by the depiction. His lawyers sent an unsuccessful cease-and-desist letter to the producers shortly after its premiere in Cannes in May, and last week on social media Trump described the film as a “politically disgusting hatchet job”. While a touch more savagery might have been satisfying for some sections of the audience, the fact the Donald has worked himself into a frothing, impotent rage about the film suggests that it must be doing something right.
