With a lot of biopics, you have to take them with a grain of salt. Characters and events are often changed or created for the purpose of a good storyline that can be squeezed into two hours of a movie.
The Apprentice is an appropriate title for a movie like this as it examines Donald Trump’s rise from a slumlord in his 20s in New York City to the Wall Street Corporate Raider he would become during the 1980s. Trump is played so well by Sebastian Stan as he turns the man into a real person rather than a character for which is how he’s been portrayed for years.
The script written by journalist Gabriel Sherman and directed by Ali Abbasi avoids showing any sympathy for Trump the way Oliver Stone did for controversial presidents in Nixon and W. From the start, Trump is a psychopath who just needs someone to pull back the layers. And he finds that person in Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), who plays one of the most despicable people ever shown in movies.
From the start, Trump is shown insulting his tenants who live in flophouses and just cares about the rent money. Both him and his father, Fred (Martin Donovan), have come under fire for refusing to rent to people of color or demanding bigger financial requirements as compared to white people. He attracts the attention of Cohn who goes to the most extreme and unethical lengths to win a case or at least have the most severe offenses dismissed.
Cohn, who died of AIDS-complications in 1986, while spending years denying he had the disease and was even gay, was the type of person who hated everyone including himself. In the 1992 HBO movie Citizen Cohn where he was portrayed by James Woods (because irony is dead), he’s dying in a hospital bed at the end when the hospital staff try to save him. One person who never liked him says as he dies, he’s finally doing something human.
Cohn famously came to attention during the infamous Julius and Ethel Rosenberg case where he prosecuted the two for spying and espionage. The Rosenbergs were convicted and both executed. He was also a chief consul for Sen. Joseph McCarthy during the Red Scare of the era. The man wasn’t a patriot. He just believed in being the bigger bully. It’s been rumored Cohn worked endlessly to get as much dirt on anyone he could (judges, politicians, businessmen) so he could later use it as leverage. With so much hatred, it’s a wonder he ever found time to do anything else.
Cohn helps the Trumps but Donald became fascinated with him, he soon bypasses Cohn on the scumbag factor. I’m pretty sure the current President (who has been in office 100 days as of this post) was influenced by both Fred and Cohn. In the end, he screwed them both over. He tries to use Fred’s dementia as a way for his father to sign over his money so Donald can pay off his mounting debts. And he refuses to be around Cohn out of fear he may get AIDS himself.
If you train a dog to attack, eventually it’s going to bite back and harder because it’s angry at you. In the 1980s, Donald is building his empire but alienating more and more people as his debts rise. His marriage to his wife, Ivana (Maria Bakalova), sours as he violently rapes her during an outburst that may have been fueled by his abuse of amphetamines. The real Trump tried to sue the filmmakers even though Ivana admitted in divorce papers that Donald had sexually assaulted her but she later recanted that before her death.
It’s funny how a man who said he can shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not get arrested is upset over depictions that have been proven time and time again in the court system. It’s perfectly fine dishing it out but can’t handle his own actions when called out on it. Only a narcissist works this way. I think the reason so many people who are “poorly educated” or “lower income” still are fascinated by Trump after 10 years is they speak the same language.
By that, I mean that living in the South and near rural areas, there’s a weird paradox in how people think. On one level, they think they’re better than those that live in affluent, metropolitan areas even though they’re limiting their views. Yet, they act like their “humble” ways make them far superior to people who go to college or work high-profile jobs. And the door swings the other way.
However, I’ve never understood the whole “Redneck Chic” thing that started 20-25 years ago. Even the people I knew who growing up were rodeo riders, they still adhered to a certain moral and ethical way. They wore shitkicker shoes that had the shit cleaned off of them as soon as possible. Those who just want to drive around waving the Confederate flag and using racial slurs aren’t Trump’s friends, they’re his pawns and underlings.
The reason Trump always sits at his desk while people are in the Oval Office is that he sees himself like a king holding court. And a king never stands up for people while he’s in court. I wouldn’t say The Apprentice is a great movie. The performances by Stan and Strong keep the movie from becoming something like The Reagans miniseries. I feel Ivana was portrayed more sympathetically because she had died back in 2022 and some might have felt she was treated badly by Donald.
But I’ve often felt that Ivana enjoyed the prestige during the 1980s. When you’re thrust into the world that is his, you either love it or hate it. Out of four marriages, she was married to Donald the longest. The combined time she was married to her three other husbands was not even half the time she was married to Donald.
During one part where Ivana tries to comfort Donald after his brother, Fred Jr. (Charlie Carrick) dies, he refuses her love and affection as he tries not to cry. He even tells Ivana to stop looking at him and don’t touch him. At this point in his life, I think Donald realized he must never look weak even in private around people. That might explain why he constantly has outbursts in private people have said where he throws things.
There’s very little mention of other characters as the Trump children are barely seen. Roger Stone (Mark Rendall) appears in a few scenes but it’s only to show how much of a doormat he has been. Stone who famously has a tattoo of Richard Nixon on his back reminds me of that one guy in high school who always seen hanging around the “cool kids” but is probably only there because he has a place for them to hang out without adults and parents stopping by. Yet he’s not really in the clique with them and often left out of other more important events.
Other people like Ed Koch, George Steinbrenner and Rupert Murdoch only appear on screen very briefly as someone mentions them so we can say, “Oh, yeah. That’s who that is.” But they really don’t serve any other purpose in the story. It’s actually a weird love triangle as Donald bouncing between his close association with Cohn and his boyish love of Ivana that quickly turns sour the minute Cohn suggests she signed an extensive prenup that she turn over all gifts.
Cohn liked to control people. And he found the perfect submissive in Donald, a man so desperately needing someone to admire. Fred Jr. was a drunk but you felt Fred Sr. still liked him more. Donald didn’t want to be another Roger Stone even though he could be as savage. The irony that Cohn expected loyalty from Donald only shows once someone gets all the power they’ve been clamoring for, they’ll abandon those around them once they are no longer needed.
Why do you think that only Stephen Miller is part of Trump’s second administration? He’s the only one young and gullible enough to believe that Trump will still let him sit at the “cool kids table.” And the similarities between Cohn and Miller are so uncanny, it’s downright disturbing.
God help us if Miller ever decides to run for the Presidency. Hopefully we won’t elect him.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 