Sebastian Stan stars as a young Donald J Trump, and Jeremy Strong is his loyal attorney Roy Cohn in director Ali Abbasi's terrifying exploration of Trump's rise to power in the 1970s and the 1980s. Cohn grooms Trump in his own shadow as the "orange-faced" capitalist develops the alluring Trump Tower in New York. But as the decades pass, Trump grows out of Cohn's visage and a monster is born.
The Apprentice doesn't break any new ground as a Trump biopic, but it oozes with style and is Sebastian Stan's career-best performance. Considering its not-so-coincidental release around the Presidential election season, it's easy to refute The Apprentice as "liberal propaganda" or an anti-Trump gimmick. And while Gabriel Sherman's fairly simplistic and sequential screenplay doesn't dig that deep into Trump's troubling psyche, it's a finely crafted and well-acted biopic. Old-money aesthetics and grainy film give The Apprentice some charming gravitas, even as all its characters are far from charming. To capture the changing face of the coke-fueled New York highlife, Olivier Bugge Coutté and Olivia Neergaard-Holm's intentionally shaky editing is also reminiscent of corporate classics like Adam McKay's The Big Short and Succession (which also stars The Apprentice's Jeremy Strong). And finally, to address the elephant in the room, Sebastian Stan. As many internet observers rightly note, the actor is too handsome to play the former US President. But Stan gives his all in nailing the duck-like pout and the cocky attitude of the man who sets out to make America great again. Aping Trump can be tricky, given his exaggerated finger gestures and quotably over-the-top one-liners. But Stan thankfully captures the many sides of a younger Trump without making it seem like he's in a Saturday Night Live skit.
But it's Succession star Jeremy Strong who chews the scenery in every scene he appears in. The Emmy winner still seems to be playing his Succession character Kendall Roy, complete with an unwavering air of confidence and a dead-eyed stare. The film's strongest scenes play out in the first half when Strong's Roy Cohn represents a naïve Trump in the courtroom and shows him the ropes of surviving in the cutthroat world of New York bureaucracy. Think of Cohn as a fairy godmother who molds Trump into a capitalist Cinderella. Once Trump gives up the shy boy act and becomes his own man, the audience is all too familiar with the beastly transformation.
The performances are so terrifyingly on point that The Apprentice truly shines as more than just an election season satire. In fact, even when Abbasi's film wants you to laugh, you would just nervously chuckle or tuck in that laugh altogether (just like a pre-liposuction Trump tucks in his belly fat). There are a few jarring moments that detail Trump's shallow treatment of the other sex, be it with his own first wife, Ivana (a terrific Maria Bakalova). Overall, The Apprentice is a near-perfect antithesis to "greatest hits biopics" by showing you the absolute worst of a man destined to be one of the most polarising figures in human history. The terrifying part of it all? The Apprentice only covers Trump's career in the 70s and the 80s. We don't need a post-credits scene to know what comes next.
The Apprentice has nothing new to say about its orange-faced muse but is perfect as a stylish and terrifying coming-of-age tale.
Watch The Apprentice — now showing in theaters