movie review
THE APPRENTICE
What sensible people, whose LinkedIn accounts don’t say “movie critic” anyway, would go see a film about Donald Trump right now?
The former president and current candidate dominates the news cycle, and obnoxious impressions of him are ubiquitous — whether on late-night TV or at every party that serves booze.
Why more?
Director Ali Abbasi and screenwriter Gabriel Sherman attempt to answer that question with their controversial film “The Apprentice,” a drama about Trump’s rise as a New York real estate tycoon in the late 1970s alongside his cutthroat lawyer and mentor Roy Cohn and wife Ivana.
Since May, the film has been treating the festival circuit like swing states, hoping to gain ground.
It premiered at Cannes in the spring and then struggled to find American distribution. Three guesses why. Last week, it played Telluride, and on Thursday night, there was a surprise private screening in Toronto, where I saw it.
I can now say the movie has something for everybody — to be angry about.
The left will be peeved that Trump, played by Sebastian Stan, is not sufficiently demonized.
Abbasi’s reasonably entertaining movie is a mostly sympathetic portrayal of a young man trying to make his way in the tough New York business world.
He’s unfairly mocked — including by Mayor Ed Koch (Ian D. Clark) — when he takes a risk on the opulent Trump Tower at a time when no one was betting on messy Midtown or, for that matter, the crime-infested city. The move pays off bigly.
Abbasi captures NYC’s grimy glamor well, too, and the film has the grainy accuracy of archival footage.
Donald also has complicated relationships with his cold father Fred (Martin Donovan), who looks down on him, and his brother Fred Jr. (Charlie Carrick), who died at age 42 from causes related to alcoholism. He falls in love with and marries sharp-witted Ivana (Maria Bakalova).
Trump’s life changes when he fatefully meets Cohn (Jeremy Strong), the powerful fixer and socialite, who lives by the adages “attack, attack, attack” and “admit nothing, deny everything.” The title doesn’t refer to a certain reality show, but rather the duo’s teacher-student relationship.
Strong, who, after applying some eye makeup, is a dead ringer for Cohn, is superb. He’s Roy three times over: A Roy Cohn-Kendall Roy-Logan Roy mashup that could rip you to shreds in a single breath. And, as Cohn is dying of AIDS, nimble Strong gets to play both pitbull and patient.
Most of “The Apprentice” doesn’t earn its edgy reputation. It’s an enjoyable imagining of behind-closed-doors conversations, like “The Crown,” and is not to be taken too seriously.
Except for two tasteless minutes.
The right will be furious about a pair of shamelessly provocative scenes that have turned “The Apprentice” into “The Cease and Desist.”
As his marriage begins to sour, and Trump starts having an affair, he violently rapes Ivana on the floor of their apartment. That’s dicey because while Ivana indeed once made that claim, she retracted it years later.
Then, in the 1980s, as his fame skyrockets, we watch Trump get liposuction and have the middle of his scalp surgically removed to treat baldness. There’s no merit to including that — only icky childish provocation.
Stan, who’s turned into Mr. Prosthetics the past few years, makes a solid Trump. In the first half of the movie when he’s green and vulnerable, he’s believable and easy to like.
However, as Trump evolves into the familiar personality we know today, members of the press around me giggled at Stan’s rounded vowel sounds and funny lip movements.
Yet another Trump impersonator. Great.
“The Apprentice” finally did find a distributor. Briarcliff Entertainment will release it on 2,000 screens on Oct. 11.
But movies about politicians tend not to make a splash with American audiences, be they about a president’s time in office (the awful “Vice” and George W. Bush) or their early years (the tiny “Southside With You” depicting Barack and Michelle Obama’s first date).
Of course, nobody breaks precedents like Donald Trump.
But even for him, getting the masses to come out to a presidential biopic less than a month before Nov. 5 would be yuuuge.