The Apprentice (2024)

Plot of The Apprentice: This is a film about Donald Trump’s early life as a property developer. He meets Roy Cohn, an attorney, famous for having prosecuted the Rosenbergs, looking for help with a  discrimination problem in his father’s low level rental housing. Cohn helps him by blackmailing the lead prosecutor. Cohn takes Trump under his wing and helps him develop a hotel in downtown Manhattan, he gives Trump the mantra ‘always attack, never admit wrongdoing and always claim victory, even if defeated’.  Trump meets his future wife Ivana when he is able to help her gain entry into a nightclub and woos her with extravagant gifts until she gives in despite telling him initially that she has a boyfriend. Later she begins to gain the limelight over her husband, resulting in Trump becoming jealous of her and casting her aside, in favour of a mistress, but he has problems with amphetamines which he takes claiming they help him lose weight. Trump develops a casino in Atlantic City, failing to pay back his loans and elsewhere failing to pay his workforce. When Cohn and his boyfriend Russell, succumb to AIDS Trump abandons them. They die, he goes on to have surgery to reduce his weight and realign his scalp.

Content: The is quite a bit of sex and nudity, and Trump’s erectile disfunction features when he is being fellated by a naked model. There is also naked homosexual sex briefly seen as Trump opens a door in Cohn’s house. Trump rapes Ivana during an argument. There is a lot of drinking of alcohol, and Trump’s brother is seen as a derelict after losing his job as an airline pilot. Trump argues with his father a bit, and later tries to get him to sign a document releasing the family trust when he, the father, is suffering from dementia. The film presents the bling within which Trump lives, while showing his ruthless attitude to his employees and those who have lent him money. He spends a lot of time on his car phone in his limo, and sitting about in clubs where others drink a lot.

A View: This film, although not a documentary does portray real events, although Ivana cited the rape in her divorce, later denied that it had taken place. Both Sebastian Stan as Trump and Jeremy Strong as Cohn were nominated as actors in a leading and supporting role in both the Oscars and the BAFTAs.  The film manages to point out how Trump made it to become really important, whether you like him or not. And how Roy Cohn had influenced him. But none of it is overt, it just lets you make up your own mind. It’s out on cable so give it a couple of hours of your time.

Fun Fact: The movie seems to have been endorsed by  Donald Trump’s 2024 election campaign. It said ‘This ‘film’ is pure malicious defamation, should never see the light of day and doesn’t even deserve a place in the straight-to-DVD section of a bargain bin at a soon-to-be-closed discount movie store, it belongs in a dumpster fire.’