The Apprentice Reviews
André Hereford Metro Weekly (Washington, DC)
Sebastian Stan captures the gestalt of Trump's ego, ambition, and bluster in Ali Abbasi's biting biopic 'The Apprentice.'
Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 14, 2024
Adam Graham Detroit News
The origins of the Donald Trump playbook... are probed in "The Apprentice," director Ali Abbasi's provocative if not explosive biographical drama which doesn't take on the former (and future?) president so much as it sets out to examine him.
Full Review | Original Score: B | Oct 13, 2024
Leonard Maltin leonardmaltin.com
The Apprenticedelivers an entertaining portrait of a three-dimensional human being who so emulates his mentor that he finally acquires all of his most disturbing traits. It’s a smart, but not smart-alecky, dramatization of his evolution.
Full Review | Oct 13, 2024
Manuel São Bento Talking Films
Ali Abbasi and Gabriel Sherman confront audiences with a raw, unsettling view of a man who shaped politics, business, his country, and the world with intense controversy and questionable morals.
Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Oct 13, 2024
Daniel M. Kimmel North Shore Movies
As a dramatization of Trump’s formative years, “The Apprentice” offers a fascinating glimpse of his evolution, foreshadowing the man who has dominated American politics for the last decade.
Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 13, 2024
Joseph Robinson Fish Jelly Films (YouTube)
Sebastian Stan gives a spectacular performance in a film that, to quote its own script, finds it "hard to settle on a grand narrative."
Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 13, 2024
Sara Michelle Fetters MovieFreak.com
Even though it never felt like I was learning anything new about the blossoming megalomaniac (and future US president), I could not pull my eyes away from the screen. Watching this man (monster?) come into his own was upsettingly captivating.
Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 13, 2024
Eric Goldman Eric Goldman's Cultured Pop (Substack)
Sebastian Stan gives an excellent performance as Trump, especially in the first half, set in the 1970s. Rather than do an exact impression of Trump, which could feel like parody, he’s evoking Trump’s attitude and how he carries himself.
Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Oct 12, 2024
Elliott Collins Movie Files
This father-son, mentor-pupil biopic story about corruption, abuse of power, greed and capitalism wrapped in a succession-ish narrative can be bit strange and bizarre but it’s written and executed well and has some extraordinary performances.
Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 12, 2024
Rick Romancito The Taos News
Sebastian Stan offers a solid performance, all the way down to some of Trump’s signature micro-expressions, but it is Jeremy Strong’s performance as Roy Cohn that is the real standout.
Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Oct 12, 2024
Patrick McDonald WBGR-FM (93.7 FM - Monroe, WI)
Support him, this film will give you insight. If not, it will expose the story of an ambitious man who took the wrong advice and used it to destroy his and our soul. Whodathunk that the "Roy Cohn 3 Credos" who generate such negative energy in our lives.
Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 12, 2024
Brian Eggert Deep Focus Review
Despite not saying anything particularly new or offering a fresh take on Trump, much of The Apprentice proves so engagingly crafted that it made the experience worth enduring.
Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 12, 2024
Emily Zemler Observer
Donald Trump has been such inescapable figure in American culture that the question is what could a serious movie about him actually have to say at this point? As it turns out, the answer is somewhere in between “a lot” and “nothing new.”
Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 12, 2024
Keith Garlington
“The Apprentice” fumbles what could have been a captivating and pertinent biopic. I’m sure it will please the one political camp and infuriate the other. For everyone else, it’s nowhere near as provocative or illuminating as its creators believe it to be.
Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Oct 12, 2024
Rob Dean Bullz-Eye.com
Gary Sherman’s script does an amazing balancing act of highlighting all the ways that Cohn and Trump were scumbags, and yet there is still a genuine deference to their humanity.
Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 12, 2024
Linda and Al Lerner Movies and Shakers
Sebastian Stan, Jeremy Strong and Maria Makalova deliver intricate characterizations in Abbasi and Sherman's fascinating version of Donald Trump’s opulent life in New York City. No wonder Trump and his legal team tried to keep this film out of theaters.
Full Review | Oct 12, 2024
Richard Roeper Chicago Sun-Times
Sebastian Stan expertly depicts Trump's rise from raw hustler to larger-than-life tycoon.
Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 12, 2024
Kent Turner Film-Forward.com
But who is the audience for a film about the most ubiquitous U.S. politician of the last decade?
Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 12, 2024
Javier Ocaña El Pais (Spain)
The Apprentice humanizes Trump, and that's fine because, let's not forget, he's a man and not a monster. But it never whitewashes him... [Full review in Spanish]
Full Review | Oct 12, 2024
Andrew Dignan In Review Online
Abbasi reserves most of his sympathies for America, which still suffers the consequences of Cohn’s lessons. The film is urgent in its message, but also entirely obvious.
Full Review | Oct 11, 2024