“You wanna know how to win? I’m gonna let you in on a little secret. There’s rules. Roy Cohn’s three rules of winning. The first rule is the simplest: Attack, attack, attack! Rule two: Admit nothing, deny everything. Rule three: This is the most important rule of all. Okay? -No matter what happens… no matter what they say about you, no matter how beaten you are, you claim victory and never admit defeat. Donald, you wanna win? That’s how you win.”
Ever since Donald Trump’s ride down that golden escalator in 2015, he has been an inescapable presence in the lives of every single American. His fame stretches back to the 1980s when he became a real estate celebrity yuppie, to the launch of his 2004-2017 show “The Apprentice” and cameos in films such as 1992’s “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York”, Trump’s image was linked with the idea of “success.” After his win over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, it seemed only natural for a biopic of America’s TV President to be greenlit.
This came from the Iranian-Danish director Ali Abbasi, who wanted to answer how someone like Trump would be created, but from an outsider’s perspective. He somehow got funding from billionaire Trump supporter Dan Snyder (the disgraced former owner of the Washington Commanders, who the NFL fined $60 million for sexual harassment) because he was under the impression that it would make his buddy Trump look good. It did not.
Despite getting good reviews on its premiere at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, few studios were willing to distribute the film for fear of legal retaliation from the Trump campaign. It was eventually released in October but bombed at the box office. Still, the crew looked forward to the upcoming awards season, and the movie managed to earn two Oscar nominations for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor.
The film showcases how Trump (played by Sebastian Stan) was created at the hands of lawyer Roy Cohn (played by Jeremy Strong, of HBO’s “Succession” fame), who is probably one of the most despicable Americans to have lived in the past century. His entry into the political world was spearheading the prosecution of the Rosenbergs, calling them derogatory antisemitic names despite being Jewish himself, along with taking. great pride in sending them to fry in the electric chair. He personally made sure that Ethel Rosenberg would also be killed, leaving her two young children to be orphaned because he had to set an example for traitors.
Trump first sought Cohn out because the government was suing the Trump organization for alleged discrimination against black tenants, and Cohn was able to win the case. Cohn mentored Trump, and Trump soon opened his first hotel, but only after receiving a controversial tax subsidy from the New York City Council. Trump also met a Czechoslovak immigrant, Ivana Zelníčková (played by Maria Bakalova), who he would later marry.
The most controversial scenes in the movie come from testimony given by Ivana in her divorce hearing, where she claimed that Trump engaged in marital rape and received liposuction surgery. While these scenes may be difficult to watch, they do show how Trump transformed from someone vaguely normal to the horrid caricature that we see on TV every day.
I watched this film together with my grandma, and she also had a little bit to say about the film and thoughts on the movie:
“It was excellent, the entire dialogue was very authentic. We saw on screen the same thing that we see on the news every day. And the acting was very good.”
This film is perfect for anyone interested in discovering more about this prominent political figure in American life. My final rating for “The Apprentice” is an 8/10.