YouHadMeAtJell-o’s review published on Letterboxd:
Felt fitting to watch this after the election. Weird times ahead indeed...
The biopic is far from my favourite genre because too often they feel formulaic and try to cram too much of the subject's life in, but The Apprentice feels like a focussed addition to the pantheon, revolving around the relationship between the orange POTUS and his equally orange mentor and lawyer, who supposedly taught him how to become a scumbag. It also offers fresh insights unless you take a real interest into Trump's life rather than just possessing passing knowledge like a sane person - it's Roy Kohn's presence that gives us something new to chew on.
As a 'supervillain origin story', it works really well, Trump's arc into insatiable businessfreak feeling pointed and considered, bolstered by Sebastian Stan's subtly fantastic performance, counterbalancing everything else about Trump's life that is in no way subtle, along with the grainy, dirty 1970/80s New York aesthetics. Equally Jeremy Strong is terrific as Kohn, an enigmatic presence throughout who is just as fascinating, delivering on some actual pathos.
As is always the case with these things that centre on a 'great' man, the wife gets high billing but doesn't actually get her own arc or any real agency in the story, simply existing to add more context to the man's journey. But as far as biopics go, this is one of the better ones that I've seen, and much of that is down to Ali Abbasi's exceptional direction, perhaps taking an outsider to hold up a mirror to expose the capitalistic rot at the core of the United States' soul that leads to creations of monsters such as Trump.
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