Film Review: The Apprentice
When “The Apprentice” 2024, from director Ali Abbasi, opens with film of Richard Nixon resigning the presidency, it is clear that the theme of the film will be how power corrupts. The title is not to be confused with the television show of the same name. In the film, released this week, October 25, 2024, a young Donald Trump, played by Sebastian Stan, becomes the sorcerer’s apprentice to one of the most ruthless and unprincipled individuals in American history, New York City attorney, Roy Cohn, played with chilling intensity by Jeremy Strong. The powerful film is guaranteed to garner multiple Academy Award nominations.
The movie depicts the young and intensely ambitious scion of a real estate empire, chafing under the thumb of his oppressive father and seeking to move in from the suburbs and make it, big time, in Manhattan. For those who are not aware of Roy Cohn’s sordid past, the film depicts Cohn bragging to young Donald, about how he routinely disregarded legal ethics, in private phone calls to the judge in the Julius and Ethel Rosenburg trial and convinced him to impose the death penalty on a young mother. The film does not go into detail about Cohn’s Mephistophelean role as advisor to Senator Joseph McCarthy in the Army hearings of the 1950s.
One brief scene shows Cohn and Trump in the company of Mafia boss “Fat Tony” Salerno, who later poured the concrete for Trump tower and ensured labor peace. The film goes into considerable detail about Cohn’s life as a closeted homosexual, who gathered compromising information on the private lives of public officials and other prominent New Yorkers and later used it to blackmail and intimidate.
Cohn took on a mentoring role for the up-and-coming young realtor and taught him principles of behavior that we have all witnessed on many occasions. One, attack, attack , attack and don’t hesitate to lie. Two, never admit that you have made a mistake or apologize. Three, if you lose, claim that you have won.
As Trump ages and becomes more and more arrogant, he ignores Cohn’s counsel and embarks on increasingly overambitious business ventures in casino gambling in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The film ends with the death of Cohn from complications of AIDS in 1986, and Trump’s abandonment of him, so we don’t get to see how Trump’s marriage fell apart and his flimsy business empire, three casinos, yacht, airline, and hotels fell, one by one, like dominos, into bankruptcy.
This is a brilliant film. The depiction of Trump’s brutal treatment of his wife and brother Fred are devastating. Recreation of a liposuction and scalp surgery must have humiliated and enraged Trump. His portrayal as Othello to Cohn’s Iago presents a total lack of remorse and offers no faint hope that his reptilian character will ever change.
Are the events portrayed in the film accurate? I was unaware of Ivana’s rape accusation against her husband. It is on public record in a legal deposition. Did Roy Cohn record private conversations, including those legally privileged? Published accounts relate how Cohn’s secretary routinely listened in and recorded his phone conversations.
“The Apprentice’s” last minute and very limited showing at only a handful of theaters in Los Angeles, suggests that theater owners fear Trump’s litigious wrath. “The Apprentice” will stream on Apple TV starting November 1. No one should vote for Donald Trump without first viewing “The Apprentice”.
October 28, 2024
Fred Grannis