The Apprentice Parent Guide
It's a tragic tale of ambitions gained and innocence lost.
Parent Movie Review
New York City in the 1970s is suffering from urban blight. Middle class residents have fled to the suburbs, the tax base is shrinking, and fabled buildings are falling into disrepair. But Donald J. Trump (Sebastian Stan) has a dream. He wants to buy the decaying Commodore Hotel, refurbish it, and gentrify the area around the Grand Central Terminal. There’s one big problem: before he can get financial backing for this scheme, he needs to make a nasty lawsuit go away.
In 1973, the federal government sued Fred and Donald Trump for trying to minimize the number of black tenants at their housing developments. In desperation, Donald Trump turns to a lawyer he has recently met, a sharp-eyed hatchet man and confidante to Richard Nixon, Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong).
Sensing potential in the wannabe property magnate, Cohn not only makes the lawsuit disappear, he appoints himself Trump’s mentor. And he gives Trump his three rules for success: First, never retreat. Always attack, attack, attack. Second, deny everything and admit nothing. (After all, truth is relative and all that matters is winning, says Roy.) And, third, never admit defeat. Insist you won and refuse to say otherwise. With those rules ringing in his ears, Donald Trump sets off to conquer Manhattan’s property market.
It’s impossible to depict Donald Trump’s entire life in a two-hour film, and director Ali Abbasi wisely doesn’t try. Instead, he focuses on how the relationship between Trump and Cohn shapes the young tycoon until Cohn’s death in 1986. There’s a near-Shakespearean tragedy here: an ambitious, somewhat naïve man achieves his monumental dreams and plays a role in restoring his city to greatness, but along the way, he becomes corrupted by his mentor, absorbing his cynicism and shadowing his own life.
While fervent Trump supporters will object to any non-complimentary portrayals of their candidate and ardent never-Trumpers might complain that the movie glosses over Trump’s racism, bankruptcies, and tawdry divorces, I think Abbasi struck a middle road. Instead of getting into the messy world of politics, Abbasi focuses his lens on the slightly less cut-throat world of business, and how that shaped the Donald Trump we see today. Given that Trump has always been happy to talk about his business success, and the reams of contemporaneous information available in books, interviews, court filings, and TV segments, it’s not hard for Abbasi to back up his script.
I do wish that Abbasi put some effort into cleaning up that script: it has some of the most explicit sexual content I’ve ever seen in a film. The movie contains a gay nude sex scene (plus a gay threesome), a nude sex scene with visible breasts, an adulterous oral sex scene involving full frontal female nudity, and a scene of marital rape (attested to by Ivana Trump in divorce proceedings and later walked back as a feeling of “violation”). There’s also a party where women are dancing around topless. Throw in plentiful alcohol consumption, brief smoking, frequent methamphetamine use, and people snorting cocaine, and the 70+ profanities feel superfluous. This is a film where the negative content is so egregious that I can’t recommend it to viewers of any age, no matter how interested they might be in exploring Trump’s backstory.
And that’s a shame. Donald Trump is a perplexing figure, a creature of his time and place. Sebastian Stan inhabits the role, giving us an ambitious striver, who lacks introspection but whose resilience and irrepressible optimism allow him to keep going full throttle to triumph or disaster. Jeremy Strong’s Roy Cohn is positively reptilian – cold, dead-eyed, and utterly without conscience. It’s a frightening film that leaves the audience with many questions, of which “What if?” is sure to predominate.
Directed by Ali Abbasi. Starring Sebastian Stan, Jeremy Strong, Maria Bakalova. Running time: 120 minutes. Theatrical release October 11, 2024. Updated October 11, 2024
The Apprentice
Rating & Content Info
Why is The Apprentice rated R? The Apprentice is rated R by the MPAA for sexual content, some graphic nudity, language, sexual assault, and drug use
Violence: A man’s suicide occurs off-screen and is not discussed: his family is seen at his burial. A man knocks his wife over and rapes her. In an operating room, an incision is cut into a man’s abdomen for a liposuction and part of his scalp is removed as a treatment for male pattern baldness. A tenant throws boiling water at the man collecting the rent: his misses and the man is unharmed. Two men die of AIDS off screen; the second men’s funeral is shown.
Sexual Content: There are four graphic sex scenes in the movie. One involves two men having sex as well as a gay threesome; no genitals are visible but there is panting and thrusting. A sex scene between a man and his girlfriend has extended female frontal nudity and jiggling breasts as she bounces on top of him. A woman performs oral sex on a man: his genitals are not seen but there is full frontal female nudity. A man rapes his wife: she is heard protesting but there is no explicit detail. A party scene features topless women dancing with visible breasts. One climbs on a (fully dressed) man’s back and slaps his bottom as he crawls around on all. Two men kiss one another. Sexually incriminating photographs are used for extortion against government officials. There are several scenes of scantily dressed women dancing suggestively. A pimp tries to persuade people to have sex with a woman he describes as his wife. A man is seen exercising wearing only a small pair of shorts. Characters occasionally make crude sexual comments, referencing oral sex. There is a brief glimpse of a sexually compromising photograph. A married couple briefly mention masturbation. AIDS is a secondary plotline.
Profanity: There are over seventy profanities in the text, including at least 31 sexual expletives, seven scatological curses, and a dozen minor curses and terms of deity. There are also numerous crude anatomical expressions and slang terms for male and female sexual anatomy. Characters use homophobic slurs and ethnic slurs aimed at Asians.
Alcohol / Drug Use: Adults drink alcohol in social situations and occasionally become intoxicated. An alcoholic gets drunk and is berated by his brother. A person smokes a cigarette. At a party, unnamed characters are seen snorting cocaine. A main character frequently takes “diet pills” which turn out to be methamphetamines.
Page last updated October 11, 2024
Home Video
Related home video titles:
If you’re looking for movies about US presidents, you can watch Lincoln, Reagan, W., or Thirteen Days. Donald Trump receives unflattering coverage in the documentaries Fahrenheit 11/9 and Totally Under Control.