The Apprentice Review: A Scary Movie

When I first heard about this movie I was very curious to see it. I think Roger Ebert said it best when he said that movies are a machine that creates empathy. The reason we watch cinema is so that we can understand our protagonists and get into their mental space and I thought maybe making a biopic about Donald Trump would dare the audience to understand him more, giving us more insight into him as a person. I hate Donald Trump, I think he's genuinely a threat to our democracy and the fact that so many people blindly follow his inherent fascist rhetoric I think is incredibly eerie. However, if we used the lens of film to understand him more than what I see through the media lens, maybe that's how we further analyze how someone could get so much power and hope that the MAGA movement never repeats again.

That isn't really what this film is concerned with however. It is an eerie look at a depraved mans journey of power. I wish we had gotten more of the psyche of Trump and watched a more thorough examination of the man instead of just the spark notes. That being said- for the films intent of showing the rise of this media mogul soon to be future president, it's one of the most chilling movies I've seen in a while. I'd argue this is the scariest movie of the year. 

I have to shout out Sebastian Stan here as Donald Trump, who gives one of the years best performances. This could have so easily been an SNL impression performance and it never feels mockish. Stan inhabits Trump and plays him pretty straight, which has to be a daunting task all by itself. I also loved the films visual aesthetics, the grain and VHS esque quality of a lot of the sequences in this film gives it a nice cinematic flair and adds to the films overall uneasy nature. 

While I do wish this was a deeper exploration of Trump, as it is, this is a pretty harrowing movie and an important watch.