Review: The Apprentice (2024)

Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan) and Andy Warhol (Bruce Beaton) are chit chatting when the future POTUS asks the white-wigged pop artist what he does for a living. Warhol looks a little nonplussed before telling The Donald that he’s an artist who makes whatever kind of art sells. In a lesser movie than The Apprentice, the exchange would serve as a shallow joke, a moment to lampoon the 45th president’s intelligence and baseline cultural ignorance.

Yet, when Trump responds “Making money is an art,” one of the 20th century's greatest cultural figures offers an affirmative grin. It’s a scene that, more than any depiction of Trump, understands his appeal as a populist striver who knows he’ll never be accepted in the world of cultural elites, but has so fully studied its inner workings its members have had but little choice to keep him in the limelight for the last five decades. 

Since its Cannes premiere last May, The Apprentice seemed the latest in a line of lefty Hollywood screeds meant to capitalize on pre-election angst among those in the rarified atmosphere. Trump threatened to sue the film’s producers while the media has repeatedly baited the cast into painting the project as an essential pillar of the fight to save democracy.  

But, as he proved in previous films like Border and Holy Spider, Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi is far more interested in dense character studies than agitprop. Thus, the Trump of The Apprentice fully embraces the complexity and allegorical heft of other Great American Titan movies like Citizen Kane and The Social Network to capture the president’s early days as a straight-edged socially awkward goof who finds himself under the tutelage of attorney Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong in a performance so brilliant, Roger Stone sung its praises)—friend to Nixon, closeted mastermind behind the prosecution of the Rosenbergs, and ally of Joseph McCarthy. 

On a superficial level, Abbasi plays the greatest hits from The Nation that have been on repeat since 2015: Trump’s stiffing of workers, gifting of knockoff jewelry, and worship of the deal are all here. However, the New York of The Apprentice is also a city in decline thanks to the outlandish property taxes and corrupt union dominance that put such landmarks as the Chrysler Building into foreclosure. Like Kane and Zuck before him, Trump is an awkward wannabee. But he’s the only one with the vision to make the city great again and, under Cohn’s mentorship, he learns just how to subvert the liberal bureaucratic class.

While The Apprentice is easily the best movie about a U.S. president since John Ford’s Young Mister Lincoln, its target audience is difficult to define. Conservatives will no doubt use it as culture war fodder despite that, as the recent Reagan biopic proved, they would be hard pressed to reach this level of artistry. Never Trumpers have already begun lambasting the film for being too easy on the Orange Man. But in an America where the Chrysler Building once again faces foreclosure and our cities become less inhabitable by the day, we’d do well to hear what The Apprentice has to say.

The Apprentice opens Friday in theaters.