This review is based on a screening at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. There is currently no announced theatrical release date. While unlikely to be revelatory to anyone watching, Ali Abbasi's The Apprentice is entertaining nonetheless as a stylistically tongue-in-cheek chronicle of Donald Trump’s life in the 1970s and ‘80s, condensed to a compact two hours.
Long before he was a U.S. president, or even the host of the eponymous gameshow, he was a New York real estate huckster being sued for racial discrimination, a predicament for which he turned to attorney, political fixer, and soon to be mentor Roy Cohn.
This is where Abbasi and writer Gabriel Sherman posit Trump’s financial rise and moral descent truly began. In the process, the director crafts an intriguing character drama led by a handful of spectacularly dialed-in performances, even though its political purview ranges from dull to non-existent. Any performance of a figure as recognizable and specifically animated as Trump runs the risk of broad parody — see also: Brendan Gleason in The Comey Rule — but Abbasi and actor Sebastian Stan work harmoniously to avoid this complication.
In the first hour, Stan's approach to Trump is more muted and naturalistic, with only hints of the caricature we've come to recognize (his pursed lips in particular). Stan seems to channel old interviews with Trump, which hint at a much more straightforward man than those who became acquainted with him later are used to. Some might eve.