Roy Cohn was one of the most toxic and pervasive influences on America in the past century. The irony was that the morally corrupt lawyer was also a closeted gay man, supporting the Reagan administration in its anti-AIDS policies as he himself was dying of AIDS. He is such a notorious and influential figure that he was portrayed by Al Pacino in the HBO adaptation of Angels In America. That was a performance so strong and so well-written that I can quote lines to this day. But in this new film, Jeremy Strong (Succession) has surpassed it.
Jeremy Strong's Roy Cohn is a despicable man. Racist, homophobic (ironically) and a capitalist red in tooth and claw. His patriotism lies in an any means necessary preservation of right-wing governance. His legal practice relies on blackmail and intimidation. Strong plays him as a wiry deeply-tanned man of unflinching self-confidence. But he also plays him as a man who loves and is loyal, and who throws that love and all of its protection on the awkward star-struck suburban hick Donald J Trump.
In this film we see Roy take Trump under his wing, blackmail away his Federal lawsuit on racially discriminatory leasing and achieve a massive City tax abatement for Trump's first large Manhattan development deal. Roy teaches him to always attack, to create his own truth, and to never ever concede defeat. He also teaches him to dress expensively - in those awful boxy dark navy Brioni suits - in order to wash the suburban cheapness off of him.
Why does he do this? The film implies that maybe there was sexual attraction at first. It's hard to imagine the obese tangerine hairball as attractive but he was young once. But soon the relationship has become far more paternal. Cohn recognise that Fred Trump is a toxic bully - driving one son to alcoholism and the other to a kind of macho posturing as self-protection.
This makes it all the more heartbreaking when a now superficially successful Trump, at the height of his 80s pomp, turns his back on a now very sick Cohn. It's testament to Strong's performance that despite the fact that I despise the real life man, I felt desperately sorry for him in his final scene. He looks both proud of his monstrous creation and heartbroken that he has been disavowed.
And what of Sebastian Stan's young Trump? This is an equally masterful performance. When we first meet him he is gauche and uncertain and obsequious. By the end of the film he is inflated in ego and stomach alike, impotent thanks to amphetamines, balding and intimidated by his wife. But he has absolutely absorbed Cohn's lessons and become the author of his own mythos. He has adopted the pursed lips and scornful eyes and hand gestures synonymous with the Trump that we know today. And yet Stan never becomes a caricature.
As Cohn is buried, the one-way love story of Roy for Donald is over, and the one-way love story of Trump for Trump has begun. He is having the fat sucked out his body - a symbol if ever there was one of excessive bile and obscene gorging on the carcass of America.
Kudos to director Ali Abbasi (HOLY SPIDER) and writer Gabriel Sherman (INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE) for having the guts to tackle this project, even at the risk of making Trump seem sympathetic at the start and Cohn seem sympathetic at the end. I am particularly impressed that they had the guts to include a scene where Trump, his ego insulted, rapes Ivana. This is something she alleged in her divorce proceedings and which he accused her of cooking up. The motivation for it seems utterly in keeping with what we know about his narcissism. The scene made me consider the role of the actress Maria Bakalova in the fever dream that has been MAGA America - acting the part of a rape victim in this account of Trump's life, and then being treated as a sexual favour by the real life Rudy Giuliani in BORAT SUBSEQUENT MOVIEFILM.
But if the courage of all involved in this film is to be praised, then we must also condemn the gutless moral midgetry of every self-avowed liberal Hollywood distributor and streaming service that didn't have the balls to take this movie on in the face of Trump's bulshit legal threats.
THE APPRENTICE has a running time of 120 minutes. It played Cannes, Telluride and London 2024. It opened in the USA on October 11th and in the UK on October 18th.
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