The Apprentice (2024)

The story of Trump's life is best told in this movie at the beginning. two distinct chapters: an hour in the ‘70s wherein a young, relatively naïve Trump (Sebastian Stan) learns the art of the deal from the relentless manipulative Cohn (Jeremy Strong). Then an hour about a decade later, when Trump has risen to a level of corruption and amorality that he would maintain for most of his life. The first half has an intriguing concept, and is reasonably well-told, but the second half falls short on where he has gone since then--that is less important, since now that we are getting the Trump 2.0 administration we can see that he is just all about breaking things, that his feelings are so badly hurt by having lost to Joe Biden, a man who is even older than he is, that he just wants to fleece everything and everyone, and he cares not a wit about who and what gets broken in his path. So, as you might suspect, this movie has two distinct chapters: an hour in the ‘70s wherein a young, relatively naïve Trump (Sebastian Stan) learns the art of the deal from the relentless manipulative Cohn (Jeremy Strong). Then an hour about a decade later, when Trump has risen to a level of corruption and amorality that he would maintain for most of his life. The first half has an intriguing concept, and is reasonably well-told, but the second half falls short of shedding any light beyond that, and maybe it is no more complicated than it seems. Pray that the techno-oligarchs do not destroy us all, and that we can survive this F6 tornado that has been unleashed on us all.