THE APPRENTICE (C+) - When I was a kid, movies like this -- by-the-numbers biographies of celebrities -- were shown on TV as "The Movie of the Week." They were the products of hacks, and they brought a surface-level presentation to their subject. The performances rarely rose above the measure of playing dress-up, with simplistic imitations.
This theatrical release from a pair of journeymen -- director Ali Abbasi and writer Gabriel Sherman -- harks back to that era with its subject, which explores the origins of Donald Trump as a businessman in the 1970s and '80s. The production values here also echo that previous era. This looks like it was shot on repurposed videotape.
We gave it 30 minutes before we started zipping through a few scenes. Trump wooing his first wife, Ivana (Maria Bakalova), with his riches (and his later sexual assault when he had grown bored with her). The drunken escapades of brother Freddy (Charlie Carrick). Any scene with a young version of weasly ratfucker Roger Stone (Mark Rendall). There is so much here that is not interesting.
Sebastian Stan provides a decent amount of depth -- as much as one can provide the squishy tabloid playboy of Koch-era New York -- and a subtle imitation of Trump. The only reason this is remotely watchable, though, is not for that performance, but for Jeremy Strong as the demonic Roy Cohn, the utterly amoral attorney who took Trump under his wing and turned the flailing real-estate scion into a soulless pirate. Strong truly seems possessed by the ghost of Cohn, his balloon-shaped head bobbing forward, his eyes probing for weakness like a junkyard dog's, so full of venom he almost stutters when he speaks. He spews faux patriotism and considers the Constitution to be a technicality. He drills Trump in his three rules of blitzkrieg power grabs: always attack; admit nothing and deny everything; and always claim victory, never admit defeat.
It's an incredible performance that is wasted in a pointless B-movie. Stan ("A Different Man," "Monday") also imbues his character with more gravitas than the man deserves. As the film progresses, you may appreciate Stan's ability to replicate Trump's sphincter-like vocal delivery, spouting empty aphorisms. It's a lived-in performance, and you want to offer him a washcloth and a bar of soap when it is over after a two-hour slog. Credit also to indie veteran Martin Donovan as the anachronistic Fred Trump, providing nuance to a lump of a character.
The familiar beats from Trump's biography -- his determination to build Trump Tower amid a downtrodden neighborhood, his hubris in pursuing a casino in Atlantic City -- are almost laughably sketched as if this were a middle-school book report. The dialogue is simplistic; it could have been written by Chat GPT. Occasional originality breaks through. When trying to foist a prenuptial agreement on Ivana, Cohn mocks her as she peruses it: "It's not the Magna Carta." When Fred Trump Sr. thanks Cohn for making his shallow son successful, Cohn intones, "I just fixed what others couldn't."
Cohn, the self-loathing homosexual, will meet a fitting end, wasting away from AIDS, and all Trump knows to do is fumigate Mar-a-Lago after the dying man's token visit, with Trump then seizing on the opportunity to steal Cohn's playbook when plotting out The Art of the Deal with a ghost writer.
It's all ghoulish stuff, and you wonder who this is for. The MAGA crowd won't believe any of this Hollywood commie propaganda. And how many sensible people will want to spend two hours with such a foul creature, even if it does mostly mock him -- portraying him as a lightweight when it comes to alcohol, and climaxing with him getting liposuction and scalp-reduction surgery. Cohn's influence is haunting. He created a Manchurian candidate, way back when the idea of Trump being president seemed like a harmless joke. In that sense, this is a horror film. Did the filmmakers realize that?
No comments:
Post a Comment