Robert Stayte’s review published on Letterboxd:
(Watching this movie only a day after I watched Joon the King's video on Lily Orchard felt oddly fitting)
LFF Film 4:
The Apprentice veers between a standard biopic and genuinely compelling look at the relationship between Cohn and Trump, the film is best helped by the combination of the two halves that do a clever switcharound of their positions as are the lead performances from Stan and Strong. Sebastian's transformation into the role is solid but he's great in showing the two different stages of Trump and Jeremy Strong is good at showing a domineering corrupt bastard that then surprisingly has some actual sympathy in the second half. The film doesn't sugarcoat nor easily one dimensional either character and the entire film does have to be watched to understand this. Even though it notices Cohn's influence, even beforehand Trump isn't a great guy and in the second half he's a total asshat to an extent that might not be shocking for people at this point but is still absorbing to watch and feels entirely believable as it's own character depiction.
But it does often fall into standard biopic plotting of throwing in and pulling out of various subplots it has to include. It's helped by zeroing in more than Biopics do so, but there's instances where plotlines and characters are picked up and put aside in a way that sticks out a bit. Ivana isn't as fleshed out even though the film does have sympathy for her and it does lead to an awkward instance of a very uncomfortable sequence that may or may not have happened but does come out of the blue, CW for that. Alia Abbsai's direction is solid in terms of the gritty camerawork and 70's/80's recreation, not to mention the older looking film stock. There's a couple of distracting moments but it largely does work and feel authentic. The soundtrack, score and music does work really well in the moment too
It's obviously gonna be hard for some people to judge this movie objectively and it's not the be all, end all depiction of Trump but it's a mostly good one. It's not one of the best films of the year yet it's certainly better than it could have been under the wrong hands for certain.
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