I will continue to update this post as reviews come in.
Rotten Tomatoes: Certified Fresh
Critics Consensus: Instead of cross-examining its subject, The Apprentice gives Sebastian Stan the chance to shine in a simplistic yet entertaining foray into the world of a young Trump.
| Score | Number of Reviews | Average Rating | |
|---|---|---|---|
| All Critics | 80% | 93 | 6.80/10 |
| Top Critics | 74% | 34 | 6.60/10 |
Metacritic: 62 (31 Reviews)
Sample Reviews:
Owen Gleiberman, Variety – For its first half, The Apprentice is kind of a knockout… Yet I have an issue with the movie, and it all pivots around the mystery of Trump. I don’t think The Apprentice ever penetrates it.
David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter – Some will argue that Stan’s performance in the central role is a touch too likeable, but the actor does an excellent job, going beyond impersonation to capture the essence of the man.
Steve Pond, TheWrap – It’s a true-life horror story in some ways, and Abbasi approaches it as a Frankenstein tale in which the mad doctor creates a monster and then loses control of it.
Jocelyn Noveck, Associated Press – The Trump-Cohn connection is well known. But in The Apprentice, his provocative if not quite shocking, entertaining if not quite illuminating, impeccably acted and inherently controversial film, Ali Abbasi takes it farther. 2.5/4
Ty Burr, Washington Post – A well-made and well-acted film that takes the easy way out of having a point of view. 2.5/4
Kyle Smith, Wall Street Journal – Both actors, especially Mr. Strong, are gripping in a coming-of-age story that portrays the younger Trump somewhat sympathetically, though he loses his soul as he learns to imitate Cohn’s tactics.
Johnny Oleksinski, New York Post – It’s an enjoyable imagining of behind-closed-doors conversations, like “The Crown,” and is not to be taken too seriously. 2/4
Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic – The Apprentice is well-made, entertaining in its way (particularly for fans of good acting) and not at all surprising. Which is probably a worse sign for the country than the movie, but true all the same. 3/5
Randy Myers, San Jose Mercury News – “The Apprentice” is a controversy magnet that, through Trump’s saga, comes across as an allegory about how wealthy, white and power-hungry American men rise to the top not by following their country’s rules but their own, which benefit them the most. 3/4
Peter Howell, Toronto Star – [Sebastian Stan] does a bang-up job capturing Trump’s verbal cadence and tics, his hand gestures and his smirk, which seemed a lot less obvious in the 1970s and ’80s than they are now. 3.5/4
Radheyan Simonpillai, Globe and Mail – There’s an inviting warmth to the Jedi master-young padawan vibe between Cohn and Trump, one that largely benefits from Strong’s performance. It’s the main show in The Apprentice, a delicate performance between bully and papa bear.
Peter Bradshaw, Guardian – Director Ali Abbasi has given us fascinating monsters in the past with Holy Spider and Border but the monstrosity here is almost sentimental, a cartoon Xeroxed from many other satirical Trump takes and knowing prophetic echoes of his political future. 2/5
Kevin Maher, Times (UK) – This is the Donald Trump movie that you never knew you needed: full of compassionate feeling yet ruthless in analysis. 4/5
Raphael Abraham, Financial Times – The Apprentice gives us a relatively safe portrait of a deeply contentious figure, one that is unsettling mostly for how little it unsettles. 4/5
Jo-Ann Titmarsh, London Evening Standard – However, there is a lot of humour here, particularly thanks to the character of Cohn, and almost always at Trump’s expense. 4/5
Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph (UK) – It’s worth watching for the light it throws on a relatively unknown chapter of his story, but doesn’t tell us anything that its subject hasn’t repeatedly told us himself. 3/5
Tara Brady, Irish Times – Watching how The Apprentice plays in America’s polarised political landscape will be intriguing. The younger Trump recalls nothing if not the ditsy heroines of YA franchises, a harmless haplessness that will not play well with the Blue States. 3/5
Shubhra Gupta, The Indian Express – Ali Abbasi manages to skate on very thin ice– being objective about his subject while being clear-eyed about all his faults– with a great deal of conviction. The film doesn’t vilify, but it is also not a hagiography.
Namrata Joshi, The New Indian Express – I found Ali Abbasi's The Apprentice curiously tame. Given the filmmaker's talk about giving political cinema its due place in the light of growing fascism, I expected a far more irreverent film.
Maureen Lee Lenker, Entertainment Weekly – The Apprentice encapsulates the American Dream, revealing all the ways in which it can be subverted into a nightmare. B+
Stephanie Zacharek, TIME Magazine – The most chilling effect of The Apprentice: the way it makes even a duplicitous manipulator and big-time hypocrite like Roy Cohn seem, at least in the end, believably sympathetic…
David Fear, Rolling Stone – Abbasi isn’t a subtle filmmaker… Here, the blunt force works in his film’s favor.
Justin Chang, New Yorker – Donald Trump’s attorneys have threatened legal action to block the release of this drama… It speaks to the useless proficiency of Ali Abbasi’s movie that the prospect of such censorship provokes more indifference than outrage.
Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine/Vulture – At some point we might wonder why we’re spending two hours watching a movie that, as it goes on, starts to feel more and more like a fancy, vaguely arty Saturday Night Live sketch that refuses to end.
Tim Grierson, Screen International – By striving for realism, The Apprentice ends up dramatically flat, the recitation of Trump’s most infamous incidents playing out perfunctorily.
Philip De Semlyen, Time Out – The two leads sell the odd-couple bromance. Strong has arguably the slightly easier task as the less familiar face, but he’s fantastic with it… And Stan grows increasingly commanding as the film goes on. 4/5
Mark Asch, Little White Lies – It’s the kind of charismatic antihero’s journey that might fly in a Scorsese film — arguably the ultimate Trump film is The Wolf of Wall Street — but Abassi and Sherman’s take on the material is largely dutiful.
Nicholas Barber, BBC.com – The Apprentice is destined to be berated by many as too flattering or too unflattering, but it's a cleverly composed snapshot of its subject at a specific time.
David Ehrlich, indieWire – Clipped from the start and increasingly uncertain of its purpose as it fumbles toward the Trump we know, this origin story certainly isn’t as painful to watch as the future that it portends has been to endure, but it’s every bit as banal and unnecessary. C
Esther Zuckerman, The Daily Beast – It feels like one of the first performances of this year’s Cannes that has true Oscar potential. That is, if the entire prospect of this movie doesn't scare people away.
Nick Schager, The Daily Beast – If Abbasi’s film doesn’t say anything particularly novel about either, it still manages to damn the Don as he would his adversaries: with no restraint or remorse.
Jake Cole, Slant Magazine – Perhaps there are limits on how deeply a film can explore the psyches of people who so nakedly show us their worst qualities. 1.5/4
Matthew Rozsa, Salon.com – As "The Apprentice" correctly shows, Cohn molded Trump into the man he is today throughout the 1970s and 1980s, with his fingerprints all over his protege decades later. 4/4
Brian Tallerico, RogerEbert.com – “The Apprentice” feels like it ultimately lands on “There’s no explanation for this guy beyond greed and capitalism.” That feels shallow and easy. 2/4
SYNOPSIS:
A young Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan), eager to make his name as a hungry second son of a wealthy family in 1970s New York, comes under the spell of Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), the cutthroat attorney who would help create the Donald Trump we know today. Cohn sees in Trump the perfect protégé — someone with raw ambition, a hunger for success, and a willingness to do whatever it takes to win.
CAST:
- Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump
- Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn
- Martin Donovan as Fred Trump
- Maris Bakalova as Ivana Trump
DIRECTED BY: Ali Abbasi
WRITTEN BY: Gabriel Sherman
PRODUCED BY: Ali Abbasi, Louis Tisné, Ruth Treacy, Julianne Forde, Jacob Jarek, Daniel Bekerman
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Lee Broda, Neil Mathieson, Andy Cohen, Noor Alfallah, Greg Denny, Gabriel Sherman, Niamh Fagan, Levi Woodward, Thorsten Schumacher, Compton Ross, Phil Hunt, Fred Benenson, James Shani, Amy Baer
CO-PRODUCERS: Ditte Milsted, Kristina Börjeson, Anthony Muir, Nima Yousefi
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Kasper Tuxen
PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Aleks Marinkovich
EDITED BY: Olivia Neergaard-Holm, Olivier Bugge Coutté
COSTUME DESIGNER: Laura Montgomery
MUSIC BY: Martin Dirkov
SUPERVISING SOUND EDITOR: Joakim Sundström
CASTING BY: Carmen Cuba, Stephanie Gorin
RUNTIME: 123 Minutes
RELEASE DATE: October 11, 2024
by chanma50