The Apprentice is a riveting if familiar account of Donald Trump's years spent at Roy Cohn's knee

[Music] as Dr Frankenstein once learned the problem with creating a monster is that eventually you have to confront the horrors you have wrought that's what happened to Roy con Jeremy Strong after mentoring a young Donald Trump Sebastian Stan an American parable of greed and betrayal brought to life with a soap operatic Glee in the Apprentice which is making its North American Premiere at the Telluride Film Festival ahead of its pre-election October 11th release date the movie has generated plenty of press already garnering cand aist letters and attempts to block its release from the Trump campaign but despite that furer The Apprentice doesn't tell us anything we don't already know considering the sheer volume of press that Trump has received in the last 10 years The Apprentice directed by Ali Abasi and written by journalist Gabriel Sherman Chronicles the rise of Donald Trump as a Real Estate Mogul and his descent into greed egomania and moral bankruptcy throughout the 1970s and 80s as a Young Man desperate to impress his father Fred Martin Donovan Trump finds an unexpected Ally in Notorious lawyer Roy con Infamous for sending the rosenbergs to the electric share at the height of the Red Scare con takes Trump under his corrupted Wing teaching him the three rules by which he lives one attack attack attack attack two admit nothing deny everything and three no matter what happens you claim victory and never admit defeat it's a sickeningly familiar Playbook to anyone who's watched the news in the past decade that I a Wheeler and dealer con covets his power and champions the notion that truth is malleable embracing his status as an indicted and embattled legal figure but he also has a secret he's gay sleeping with Russell Eldridge Ben Sullivan and most of other men who flid in and out of a circle but as is so often the case the student eventually exceeds the master As Trump elevates con's propensity for lies and exploitation of legal gray areas to an art of the deal the film doesn't offer much insight into Trump Beyond what's already out there hitting the bullet points of his withholding father early foras into real estate hyperbolic business dealings accompanied by Massive debts and a latent misogyny that eventually extends to even to his wife Ivana Maria balova perhaps that's because there is nothing left to Plum by this point Trump and every political pundit with air time has made it abundantly clear who he is and how he got that way the most disturbing aspect of The Apprentice is how familiar this all is by now and how numb we are to its depravity what The Apprentice does have to offer is a masterful slate of performances that far exceed the usual mimicry of many buzzy Hollywood would biopics Stan avoids any of the over-the-top late night parodies of Donald Trump instead gradually evolving into the more recognizable bloviating Tann grotesque figure at first he has the marker of only a few of Trump's ticks the slight pucker of his lips the halting hyperbolic repetitive speech patterns but as Donnie's ego grows so does his waistline his bald spot and his exaggerated way of talking his lips puckering in direct correlation to his spiraling egomania Stan shows us that Devolution with a careful Precision forgoing imitation for a true embodiment it's hard to believe that anyone as attractive as Stan could so believably transform into a man so wretched and yet he does so with a subtlety that Trump scarcely deserves still while Stan's transformation is remarkable the movie's MVP is strong as Roy con strong who won an Emmy for his portrayal of eldest boy Kendall Roy on session has a gift for humanizing the most corrupt and Despicable Among Us without question Roy con was one of the most repugnant historical figures of the 20th century and yet somehow strong makes us feel empathy for the man and really Mr strong I say this with deep affection F you for that strong is able to reach beyond the moral rot and Corruption of a person to find whatever fragile piece of a soul his characters May possess strong also delivers a rivet Arc beginning as an overly tan Power Player and wasting away into a man Fel by his own hubris and the AIDS epidemic As Trump slowly excises cone from his life you can practically hear strong mutter et2 brute as he sizes up the monster he has created Maria balova Oscar nominated for her work in Borat subsequent movie film also delivers top tier work as Trump's first wife Ivana she goes toe-to-toe with her husband in initially winning him over with her model body and her business aspirations a fact that later turns him against her balova captures ivana's conflicted love for Donald and the trappings of his lifestyle while emphasizing that Ivana at least still had some degree of a moral compass and it's impossible not to relish the strange synchronicity of bova's portrayal of Iana and the fact that the actress first rose to prominence for her onscreen encounter with former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani Abasi shoots everything with a tacky cheap veneer though it is sometimes difficult to tell if this is intentional or a factor of the independent production small budget regardless it mostly works and Martin diroff David Holmes and Brian Irvine enhance it all with a score that Echoes the surging Melodies of succession a musical Motif that now automatically signifies greed and its deleterious consequences near the film's conclusion alasi con a crosscutting sequence that hammers home the thesis of all this Camp grotesquery as Roy con is Laid to Rest by a children's choir singing My Country Tis of Thee Donald Trump undergoes liposuction and surgery to remove his bald spot it distills the cognitive dissonance of trump and con's success and celebrity just opposing the bloody ugly entirely false pursuit of an appealing veneer with the Twisted patriotism these two men contend to espouse only in America could men like Donald Trump and Roy con exist their greed their lust for power their belief in themselves and their self-importance a product of the myths of Independence and self-reliance they were fed since birth and in that way The Apprentice encapsulates the American dream revealing all the ways in which it can be subverted into a nightmare grade B+