Trump origin biopic The Apprentice is a gorgeously made exposé that exposes nothing new

The Apprentice, the new film from Ali Abbasi headed to theaters this weekend, is a shallow dive into the origins of Donald J. Trump. Set against the inciting incident of the Trump family being sued by the government for discrimination against Blacks in their apartment rentals, the 1973 case that could’ve sunk a real-estate slumlord instead created a branched and unpredictable fate. The infamous swinging-dick lawyer Roy Cohn takes a liking to a young, attractive rich kid with grand ambitions, and agrees to defend the Trump family with the same fervor and unbridled ambition he’d brought to prosecuting Julius and Ethel Rosenberg into the electric chair. Cohn, a cruel yet efficient machine built to bulldoze an unending world of perceived enemies, takes Donald J. under his wing.

Thus begins a modern-day Frankenstein parable, where a twisted master of the human condition believes he can craft a more perfect version of himself, and instead creates a monster he has no power to stop. Roy Cohn personified the dark arts of American politics, turning empty vessels into dangerous demagogues—from Joseph McCarthy to his final project in the limelight here.

There’s certainly a place in history to reckon with one of the all-time great rat-fuckers. Like McCarthy, this sort of power-mad nefarious ne’er-do-well pulling the levers of power is a fascinating study in when blind ambition meets pure psychosis. Does it need a movie to cover Cohn’s life and times? Yes, and it exists in a 2019 documentary Where’s My Roy Cohn? that explores his life through the lens of his crafting the then-president Trump. It’s quite good, and worth a watch.

It’s also the entry point to talking about the confusion and consternation with The Apprentice. If the point was to portray new information or a new understanding of what makes Donald Trump tick, it’s all been covered to death elsewhere. If the point was to take said mountains of behind-the-scenes stories and wrap them into the easy-to-digest film that the everyman undecided voter might be able to wrap his head around, then The Apprentice is a massive failure. And it is perhaps the fault of how much Donald Trump information overload that we’ve drowned under in the last decade that there wasn’t a good way of tackling this at all.

The Apprentice exists and thrives for two reasons alone: Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump and Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn. This is an actor’s actor’s movie, and Strong turns in a nightmare portrayal for the ages. If there was purely Roy Cohn’s movie, this would be award-season catnip. Unfortunately, Cohn is strong-armed to the sidelines of the story faster than expected, and soon it’s a story of a naive Trump coming up in a director mirror of New York City’s rise from ’80s sleaze. Cohn suffers in silence, ignored, and fully cut from the world of his creation’s master plan.

Like so much else in The Apprentice, this storyline seems designed to show the creation turning on its creator, just as the once unknown Trump was once the apprentice of evil incarnate, who would eventually reinvent himself as the creator of others via a television show also called The Apprentice. However, all the puppeteering falls away when the characters who might see retribution are also written out. Cohn simply not being invited to ski lodges doesn’t cut to the heart of any human experience.

Inversely, any opportunity to attempt to frame or explain what allowed Trump to evolve into the man we know today, are shortened or ignored entirely. From the tell-alls of family members, we know how Trump’s father treated him, and how that taught up about empathy, manhood, and a broken man’s priorities. Here, Fred Trump is almost sympathetic, as he’s introduced as a tough guy who later deteriorates to the point where his own son is scheming to take advantage of him.

A scattered film, The Apprentice has a few strong elements (gorgeous filmmaking, stunning talent) but this ho-hum biopic doesn’t give anyone on any point in the political spectrum what they’re looking for, and coming out mere weeks before its main character could be made the most powerful person in the world (again) it misses the mark for meeting the moment.