The Apprentice review: Sebastian Stan is 'excellent' as a young Donald Trump

With Sebastian Stan as the young Donald Trump and Jeremy Strong as his notoriously vicious lawyer mentor Roy Cohn, The Apprentice is part "compellingly cynical buddy movie", part conventional biopic.

Taking its name from a certain television series, The Apprentice is a shrewd and darkly amusing tragicomedy that dramatises Donald Trump's rise to fame and fortune in the 1970s and 80s. What that means is that some viewers will condemn it for being too harsh and others will condemn it for not being harsh enough. But the filmmakers' cunning efforts to show their subject as a human being rather than a superhero or a supervillain are what make it so watchable. While the movie begins with a disclaimer that many of its events are fictionalised, the former president has threatened to take legal action.

Donald (Sebastian Stan) is first seen as a young man in the early 1970s. He works for the New York real estate company run by his cold and condescending father Fred (Martin Donovan), knocking on doors and collecting rent from his impoverished tenants, but he dreams of opening a luxury high-rise hotel near Central Station. The only snag is that the company is being sued over the small matter of its racial profiling of potential renters. "How can I be racist when I've got a black driver?" splutters Fred.

Enter Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), a notoriously vicious and unscrupulous lawyer who catches Donald's eye in a swanky members club. Cohn may be in the habit of taking meetings in his office while he does sit-ups in his underpants, but Donald is spellbound by his rudeness, his contempt for his opponents, and his three rules for success: always attack, never admit to any wrongdoing, and never admit defeat. The fact that he is so open about using blackmail only adds to his lustre in the younger man's eyes. Cohn could be the encouraging father figure that Donald has always lacked.

The Apprentice is directed by Ali Abbasi, the Iranian-Danish director of Border and Holy Spider, which might explain why it is less partisan than an equivalent film from a US director (although the screenplay is by Gabriel Sherman, a US political journalist). Shot to look like a worn-out video tape of a 1980s TV show, it's good sordid fun in its first half because its Donald is so different from the one who has become unavoidable over the past decade.

Stan nails Trump's movements and facial expressions, but he makes the wise decision not to attempt an impersonation or a caricature, instead playing the character as an insecure and impressionable lost soul who has no idea how to have a conversation, and who keeps stopping besides parked cars to check how his wispy hair looks in their windows. It's an excellent, nuanced performance that could make Trump sympathetic, whatever your political leanings. You might not agree with Abbasi's approach, but it's certainly a bold one.

Strong is mesmerically odd as the unblinking, unsmiling Cohn, and as long as these two men are together, The Apprentice is a compellingly cynical buddy movie. Cohn buys Donald an expensive suit and tutors him on how to boast to the press, and he teaches him various phrases and attitudes that would later become Trump trademarks. Abbasi doesn't overdo any of this, but he can't resist putting in a badge for Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign that has the slogan, "Let's Make America Great Again".

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It's a shame that the film all too quickly pushes Cohn to the sidelines. The second half of The Apprentice becomes a more conventional biopic, working its way through Donald's successful and less successful business ventures, and chronicling his toxic relationship with his first wife Ivana (Maria Bakalova from the second Borat film). But it's still grimly fascinating to see the build-up of Boogie Nights-style sleaze as he takes to amphetamines, plastic surgery and younger women.

It's also rather strangely sad to see something inside him withering away and dying. As Donald talks more and listens less, and apparently loses all capacity for genuine affection, it's clear that Stan, Abbasi and Sherman were thinking of Citizen Kane and The Godfather, not to mention the way Shakespeare's Hal casts aside his former friend and mentor.

Again, The Apprentice is destined to be berated by many as too flattering or too unflattering, but it's a cleverly composed snapshot of its subject at a specific time. Ultimately, it doesn't say anything we haven't heard, and it doesn't plumb the psychological depths. But as the producers could be in legal trouble already, that's probably for the best.

★★★☆☆

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