CINEMA REVIEW: Dodgy Donald Trump film gives chilling portrait of a vile man

Predictably it’s an utterly loathsome portrait we get of the young Donald Trump in Ali Abbasi’s film The Apprentice. It was never going to be a movie in support of his election campaign.

Every moment fizzes with a disbelief that anyone is even remotely considering voting for such a crook. Indeed, the very opening image, setting the context, is of President Nixon. Hardly surprisingly Trump has declared war on the film. And oddly only now do its actors seem to be waking up to its consequences.

And fair enough. This is a film which shoots itself in the foot massively. Yes, Trump’s first wife accused him of rape, but she later retracted the allegation, an allegation which Trump always denied. Yet here it is presented as absolute fact. You wonder what on earth the film-makers were thinking. At the very least it leaves you doubting the rest of the film – however meticulous they claim their research has been. The fact is that inclusion of the rape fatally undermines the film.

Which is probably a shame because it is a movie which, painfully slow at the start, eventually draws you in, thanks to a couple of remarkable performances.

At first, Sebastian Stan doesn’t particularly convince as the young Donald when we see him in the 1970s. The resemblance is superficial to say the least, and he does no more than hint at a few of the mannerisms. But in the second half, you realise that this is a film about Trump becoming Trump. In the last hour of the film, as we enter the 1980s, you realise the huge cleverness of the performance. Trump is starting chillingly to be Trump.

Terrific too from Jeremy Strong as his mentor, the New York lawyer Roy Cohn who spots the young Trump and urges in him the drive and the ruthlessness with which he established himself as the prince of New York, preening himself on his supposed Robert Redford good looks. The irony is that the ruthlessness Cohn encourages is a ruthlessness Trump eventually turns on Cohn himself. Strong gives Cohn an eerie, steely stillness. It’s a chilling portrait.

Chilling too – as depicted here, at least – is Trump’s pursuit of the already-engaged Ivana (Maria Bakalova). Trump’s modus operandi is that he gets everything that he wants, not least when it comes to Trump Tower for which former fashion model Ivana turns interior designer – until Trump turns on her. He is the narcissist, the bully, the shallow heartless swine – traits which he also shows towards his own family, particularly the alcoholic older brother Fred (Martin Donovan) whom he effectively abandons to his fate.

The Apprentice gives us a Trump who is vile and hateful in his single-minded pursuit of whatever it is he happens to be pursuing. You just wish that the film hadn’t so completely undermined itself with the inclusion of the contested rape.