The Apprentice

15 | ★★★★✩

We have always known that Donald Trump’s formative years as a property developer were influenced by Roy Cohn. But this biopic directed by Danish Iranian Ali Abbasi argues that the renowned McCarthyist attorney was the most influential figure in Trump’s life.

Cohn takes an instant liking to the blond, naive daddy’s boy, which is not fully explained by the gay lawyer’s hidden (from the public at least) sexuality. But much of what is recognisable as the three rules of Trump’s modus operandi was taught by Cohn, according to this movie. Rule one is attack, attack, attack; rule two is admit nothing, deny everything, and rule three is claim victory no matter how badly you lose.

Sebastian Stan as Donald

The ruthlessness that we now associate with the Republican presidential candidate was also a tactic learned from Cohn, played superbly here by an almost pathologically deadpan Jeremy Strong, who proudly recalls that one of his finest hours as prosecutor was insisting that convicted spy Ethel Rosenberg was sent to the electric chair along with her traitor husband Julius.

Sebastian Stan as Trump is terrifyingly convincing. But not because the Captain America actor reveals an immoral Machiavellian core to Trump, but because he suggests there is an amoral vacuum there instead. It is a place where good notions and bad might randomly find purchase if they seemed to advance the host’s cause.

Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn and Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump

This Trump is no monster. The suppressed tears at his alcoholic brother’s death are testament to that. But this is a portrait of a hustler who is still hustling; who hung on to the coat tails of the baddest influencer he could find until he was towed to stardom. Gabriel Sherman’s script cleverly deploys early iterations of Trump-speak that are now familiar to billions such as “like you wouldn’t believe”. Also worth a mention is Maria Bakalova who as Trump’s first wife Ivana is complicit in his rise and, in the scene where he rapes her, a victim of her husband’s soullessness. What one wonders would Melania make of it.