The Apprentice (15)
Directed by Ali Abbasi

 
WITH just under two weeks to go to the US presidential election comes a searing film about Donald Trump, the early years, which examines how he became the larger-than-life divisive and polarising figure (I am being polite) in America he is today. 
 
Directed by Ali Abbasi (Border, Holy Spider) in this his first English language film, and written by Gabriel Sherman, this is an intimate yet eye-opening study of how, in 1970s New York, a young Donald (Sebastian Stan, A Different Man) and aspiring real estate mogul, struck a Faustian deal with right wing cut-throat lawyer and political fixer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong, Succession). Cohn, a closeted gay man, helped secure the conviction and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg as Soviet spies, and also assisted Senator Joseph McCarthy to investigate suspected communists and oust suspected homosexuals from US government departments. 
 
Visually edgy, it shows how Cohn took a young and bumbling Trump under his wing and taught him how to play the corrupt system to his own advantage, and how to become a winner at all costs. He taught him his three golden rules for success: firstly attack attack attack; then admit nothing, deny everything; and finally claim victory and never admit defeat. This is still Trump’s mantra today. 
 
Stan and Strong are extraordinary, delivering career-defining performances as these two odious yet flawed men who undergo a major transformation. Stan is unrecognisable as Trump who is desperate for his domineering father’s approval although the vain and narcissistic traits are there from the off. He is forever fiddling with his hair and is shown having a scalp reduction and liposuction in disturbing detail. 
 
When Ivana (a phenomenal Maria Bakalova), his first wife, calls him fat and orange in a tension-filled scene, he attacks and rapes her — which she revealed in her divorce deposition although she later retracted it. 
 
You know things are awry when you start feeling sorry for Cohn after Trump the apprentice becomes the master and treats him abysmally, distancing himself from his mentor particularly after he becomes seriously ill with Aids, which Cohn insists is liver cancer. 
 
The film also attempts to expose the rotten and unscrupulous US capitalist and political system which allowed these men to rise to the top and where success, money and power matter more than integrity and decency. 
 
In under a fortnight’s time the unscrupulous and convicted felon Trump could be president again. Cohn has a lot to answer for.  

In cinemas October 18