The Apprentice (2024) Review: Jeremy Strong Steals the Show in Well-Acted and Entertaining Biopic
2024 is best described as the year of transformation for Sebastian Stan from looking unrecognisable under heavy prosthetics and makeup to portray a character with facial disfigurement in A24’s A Different Man to putting on weight for his role as the young Donald Trump in The Apprentice. For the latter, Ali Abbasi’s biopic explores Trump’s early years way before he became the US president in 2017.
Set in the ’70s and ’80s era, the then-twentysomething Trump works for his father’s (Martin Donovan in a solid supporting turn) real estate company collecting rents. He’s socially inept from the first time the movie introduces his character, evidently in the earlier scene in the exclusive members-only Le Club, where he has his eyes fixated on Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), the infamous lawyer who has survived three indictments from bribery to extortion and obstruction of justice. Cohn doesn’t mince words when he speaks and has the confidence and ambition that Trump admires the way he does things.
The two subsequently become friends after Cohn helps win Trump’s father’s legal case using a blackmail trick. Cohn mentors Trump including teaching him the law of the jungle: Attack, attack, attack; Admit nothing, deny everything; and never admit defeat. Trump’s first huge success comes from his pitch to convince CEO Jay Pritzker (Chris Owens) to turn the old Commodore Hotel into the Grand Hyatt with the help of Cohn. Trump grows increasingly egoistic when comes to taking too big of a risk, notably his decision to build a casino in Atlantic City — a result that even Cohn doubts his impulsive way.
The Apprentice also touches on Trump’s personal life including his sibling relationship with eldest brother Freddy (Charlie Carrick), who works as an airline pilot that their father feels embarrassed of his line of work and even labelling his job as nothing more than a goddamn bus driver with wings. His love life, in the meantime, includes falling for Czech model Ivana (Maria Bakalova) and how their romance starts from the result of Trump’s persistence to their subsequent marriage, albeit with an initial hiccup related to a prenup.
Working from Gabriel Sherman’s screenplay, whose previous credits include Independence Day: Resurgence to writing television series including The Loudest Voice and Alaska Daily, Abbasi approaches the young Donald Trump biopic like running a fast-food restaurant. The story is all surface-level, even though the movie does get a fair boost from a lively 122-minute runtime and of course, the stellar cast led by Sebastian Stan. He embodies the arrogant swagger and overconfidence that defines Donald Trump’s personality and not to forget, his physical transformation alone including sporting Trump’s blonde comb-over hairdo and a dead ringer for the titular property mogul himself.
The movie equally benefits from the supporting cast including the aforementioned Martin Donovan as the no-nonsense Fred Trump and Maria Bakalova as Ivana. But it was Jeremy Strong, best known for his role as Kendall Roy in the acclaimed TV series Succession, who steals the show as the cocky and manipulative Roy Cohn. He brings an undeniable intensity to his acting, notably from Cohn’s days of practising law, where moral and legal ethics are shoved aside in favour of whatever dirty tactics to win a case.
Cohn was also a closeted gay individual and his homosexuality ultimately robbed his life not only in terms of mortality after contracting AIDS but also the loss of dignity during his eventual downfall in his later years. The 1980s scenes soon depict Strong’s Cohn becoming a shadow of his former self, looking all frail and pathetic and how the mentor-apprentice relationship between him and Trump has soured to the point of humiliation. Come Oscar time, it would be a crime not to see Jeremy Strong making it to the shortlist as one of the top contenders in the Best Supporting Actor category.
