The Apprentice

Jeremy Strong and Sebastian Stan in “The Apprentice.” IMDB photo by Courtesy of Scythia Films - © Scythia Films

Considering the political follies filling my screens at home 24/7, it must have been pure masochism that drove me to an actual movie theater recently to see “The Apprentice.” 

It's a horror show of sorts, a contemporary variation of Frankenstein. 

Only it's a biopic, too, based on a true story. The villain is diabolical attorney Roy Cohn. The monster he creates is named Donald Trump.

Sebastian Stan channels the young Trump during the Reagan '80s, when he was still “Donnie from Queens.” Vice-president of his overbearing father's construction company, he suffers from an edifice complex. Enamored of money and class, he dreams of building skyscrapers, and barging his way into Manhattan penthouse society.

Jeremy Strong delivers an equally compelling performance as the hollow-eyed, rodent-faced Cohn, Senator Joe McCarthy's chief litigator during the anti-communist crusades of the '50s. McCarthy was the demagogue, but Cohn was the Machiavellian architect of the black lists and witch-hunts to rid America of the supposed commies in our midst. 

Unlikely bedfellows – tall, blond Aryan Trump was everything that the scrawny, Jewish, closeted homosexual Cohn wasn't – it was still love at the first sight when the power-broker attorney spotted the young man who had just been voted into his very exclusive club of Manhattan's most elite movers, shakers and thugs.

For Cohn, the attraction might have been as simple as Trump's good looks. For Trump, it was Cohn's utter ruthlessness. The feds were on the Trumps' backs (actually up a different part of their anatomy, Donald says) for racist rental practices in their Brooklyn apartment complexes. Donnie beseeches Roy to save them.

Directed by Ali Abassi from Gabriel Sherman's screenplay, the apprenticeship is as illuminating for the audience as it is for the young Trump. Rule number one: deny, deny, deny! Anyone threatens legal action, sue 'em back before they start. Double down, double down, double down. That's a rule, too. 

And most importantly: you never lose. Whatever the outcome, declare victory.

Sound familiar?

Accuse your opponent of your own sins. 

Sound familiar? Cohn undoubtedly taught him the term “witch-hunt,” too.

Although young Donnie initially has some trepidation, he proves a quick study. His bullying father, Fred Trump (Martin Donovan), had already instilled in his son the belief that men are either killers or losers. As Cohn usurps the father figure role, Trump takes his teachings to heart … at least as long as he still has a heart.

The secret of Cohn's ability to bend opponents to his will turns out to be an elaborate surveillance network – bugs, hidden mikes and cameras, reel-to-reel tape recorders – getting blackmailable secrets on everyone.

Surrounded by beautifully recreated sights and sounds of New York City in the '80s, Stan's Donald Trump is naïve, an almost sympathetic babe in the woods when he first falls under Cohn's spell. “The Apprentice” plots the loss not only of his innocence, but, more importantly, his humanity. The other characters – especially his first wife Ivana (a terrific Maria Bakalova) – become nothing more than collateral damage as his narcissism grows ever more insatiable.

By the film's end, Donnie has become Donald. He has learned everything his mentor had to teach. Everyone is expendable. Beginning with the mentor.

For all the trappings of wealth – the two men both confuse crass with class, as Trump Tower's pink marble floors and gold escalator attest – you leave “The Apprentice” feeling like you've been to a carny freak show, witness to the Darwinian aberration of a pair of mammals transforming themselves into reptiles.

“The Apprentice's” time frame stops well short of Trump's political career. The closest it comes is an interview with Barbara Walters. When she asks what he would do if he couldn't build buildings, he says running for president comes in a distant second.

Devoid of any political beliefs of his own – other than to stop government from impeding capitalism – Trump adopts Cohn's. The irony, if you can call it that, is that Cohn's brand of flag-waving patriotism, is nothing but a pile of lies to mask his self-loathing.

Far surpassing his mentor's expectations for him, Trump's greatest – actually his only – political gift is for selling the lies.