The Apprentice

The Apprentice’s most effective takedown of Donald Trump is how unremarkable it makes him seem. This may render Ali Abbasi’s portrait of the early days of the former president and current presidential candidate a little monotonous, but it makes its point succinctly. Read full review

What we have here is something like a supervillain origin story, with Cohn spelling out almost every negative trait that now defines the former president. That makes for momentum, but the approach – supposing a man is made by other men alone – is also inherently trivial and reductive. Read full review

Unlike its subject, The Apprentice largely sticks to documented facts. Most of the cheating, lies, greed, vanity and misogyny on display are hardly new or shocking, and rather mild compared to what’s to come. Read full review

In the end, The Apprentice is a story whose central character wouldn’t really justify the telling of said story in normal circumstances, except for the fact that he eventually became a ruinous president of the United States. Read full review

The Apprentice — its title a play on Trump’s original identity in relation to Cohn, as well as the reality show that helped get him elected president — is well-made, entertaining in its way (particularly for fans of good acting) and not at all surprising. Read full review

The Apprentice lacks the gravitas or impact of [Abbasi's] earlier films, but it’s a pleasing enough doodle thanks to Stan, Strong, and a lot of period wigs. Read full review

The main problem with Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice is that the film is a character study with very little character to study. ... Still, what the film lacks in revelatory insight into the Trump psyche, it makes up for in enticing context. Read full review

It’s entertaining to a point. ... But whether the filmmakers truly get under Trump’s skin is debatable. Do we learn much new about him? Perhaps not, but it’s an absorbing journey all the same. Read full review

For its first half, “The Apprentice” is kind of a knockout: the inside look at how Trump evolved that so many of us have imagined for so long, and seeing it play out is both convincing and riveting. 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.

The supporting performances, impressive as they are, only sketch characters, rather than embodying them—because Abbasi’s merely efficient direction leaves the actors little time and little space onscreen to delve into their roles. Read full review

Is this a satire of the American Dream? A horror movie about how it became a nightmare? Or a comedy about a buffoon who basically stumbled into the men’s room on the right day? It seems unwilling to really answer these questions, content to substitute easy shots for difficult conversations about capitalism, politics, family, and marriage. Read full review

The Apprentice is a hodgepodge of scenes from the life of Trump and Cohn with little emotional fluidity. Read full review

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. Read full review

Glossy, grotesque, and intriguing even as you hate yourself for getting sucked into it, this isn’t an awful film. It just shouldn’t exist. Read full review

By striving for realism, The Apprentice ends up dramatically flat, the recitation of Trump’s most infamous incidents ... playing out perfunctorily. Read full review

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. It’s basically a far less original picture. Read full review