Movie Review: How did Trump become Trump? ‘The Apprentice’ has a theory

Decades before he hosted “The Apprentice,” Donald Trump was … an apprentice.

His mentor: Roy Cohn, the ruthless attorney who was a prominent New York power broker in the ’70s and ’80s after famously serving as a top aide to Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

The Trump-Cohn connection is well known. But in “The Apprentice,” his provocative if not quite shocking, entertaining if not quite illuminating, impeccably acted and inherently controversial film, Ali Abbasi takes it farther.

It’s this relationship, posits the Danish Iranian director, that essentially made a young real estate heir — inexperienced but wildly ambitious — into the man who would become the 45th U.S. president, smashing the norms of American politics along the way.

Speaking of unlikely paths: The mere route of “The Apprentice” to the big screen is fodder for its own movie.

Written by Gabriel Sherman and starring an ingeniously cast trio of Sebastian Stan as Trump, Jeremy Strong as Cohn and Maria Bakalova as Ivana Trump, the film failed to get picked up at Cannes in May. That was surely due at least in part to a cease and desist letter from Trump lawyers.

Trump’s campaign spokesman called the movie “pure fiction” (the filmmakers call their script “fact-based”). One of the film’s investors — Trump supporter Dan Snyder, former owner of the Washington Commanders — saw it and wanted out. It was only weeks ago that Briarcliff Entertainment announced it would open “The Apprentice” this Friday — less than four weeks before the U.S. election.

So, what kind of movie do we have here?

Contrary to some descriptions, Abbasi says his film isn’t a biopic at all, but a look at a relationship — and at a system that’s about winning at any cost.

He’s also not, he says, trying to be political — an admirable goal but perhaps an impossible one. In any case, it’s hard to imagine anybody coming to this film to make their mind up about Donald Trump. While it’s hardly a hit job — the early Trump scenes are somewhat sympathetic — his supporters, should they come at all, will likely not be fans of many later scenes, most dramatically a rape scene with wife Ivana. Trump is also shown having scalp-reduction surgery to combat baldness, among many other things.

But the core of the film is his relationship with Cohn, whom a young Trump, son of Queens developer Fred Trump, meets in the ’70s. “Anybody who’s anybody comes here,” he tells an uninterested date in an exclusive Manhattan club. “They say I’m the youngest person ever admitted.”

He’s invited to Cohn’s table. Trump hopes the brash attorney will help his family fight a federal case alleging they discriminate against Black tenants. Cohn eventually agrees. Soon, he’s also paying the bill for Trump’s much-needed upgrade to expensive Brioni suits. He invites Trump to one of his wild parties, attended by notables like Andy Warhol, where, “if you’re indicted, you’re invited.”

Most importantly, Cohn imparts to Trump his three most important rules. First, “Attack, attack, attack.” Then: “Admit nothing, deny everything.” And finally: “No matter what happens, you claim victory and never admit defeat.”

The younger Trump is portrayed here as a bit of a charmer — there are even comparisons to Robert Redford — with lovingly tended hair, aching to succeed and please his exacting father. Stan, on a roll after the recent “A Different Man” about a wholly different kind of transformation, gives a nuanced performance that manages to capture Trumpian qualities but not to mimic. Although familiar mannerisms and speech patterns emerge as Trump ages, this is no “Saturday Night Live” skit.

As for Strong, who better to play Cohn than the exquisitely tortured Kendall Roy of “Succession”? Strong, famous for losing himself in roles, seems to have heard the word “reptilian” and, through sheer force of will and talent, found a way to actually resemble a snake.

Trump proves an eager learner, and Cohn’s help proves instrumental in achieving the younger man’s vision: placing a luxury hotel right on 42nd Street, a sleazy area he aims to revitalize. With some Cohn-esque pressure on city officials, the gleaming Grand Hyatt opens in 1980.

That’s three years after Trump marries Ivana, the Czech-born model he meets at the club and doggedly woos. Bakalova, who earned an Oscar nod for “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,” is terrific, both warm-hearted and fiery in her famous blonde updo.

Their failing marriage makes for the film’s most shocking scene. Ivana tries to spice up their sex life, but her husband says he’s no longer attracted to her — he even hates the fake breasts he made her acquire. She insults him back, and he forces himself upon her violently. (Ivana Trump, who died in 2022, accused Trump of rape in a sworn statement in the ’90s but later said she didn’t mean it literally.)

Ivana has turned cold and bitter by the time she informs Cohn, now dying of AIDS, that a bejeweled gift Trump just gave him is a mere cheap imitation. “Donald has no shame,” she says.

Soon, the mentor is gone. And 30 years after the film ends, Trump will become president. This film’s biggest lack is the connective tissue — we don’t ever really understand, alas, how young Trump became President Trump.

But we do at least see the power of Cohn’s lessons. As Trump sits down at the end with the writer he’s hired to co-author his 1987 “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” he recites for him his three most important rules.

Guess what they are?

“The Apprentice,” a Briarcliff Entertainment release, has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association for sexual content, some graphic nudity, language, sexual assault, and drug use. Running time: 120 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.

Noveck is an Associated Press national writer specializing in culture and gender, and a film critic.

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