The Apprentice | Film Review

In 1970s New York, a young Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan) becomes the protégé of cutthroat lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong).

Now if I'm honest, I wasn't planning to watch this film. I didn't think I'd find it entertaining and I didn't particularly care about the subject matter, so it wasn't on my list. But seeing that it has been nominated for awards, with one of those nominations being a very well-deserved 'Best Actor' Oscar nomination for Sebastian Stan, I couldn't not watch it.

And as expected, the best thing about this film is Stan and his performance.

He's great in the role, and the supporting actors do a great job of helping to tell this story.

I didn't really know what to make of the tone of the film. From the very beginning things just feel a bit weird, and because of that, it took me a while to really get into it.

It never made me care about any of the characters one way or the other, which may have been the intention. 

The relationship between Trump and Cohn (Strong) is what holds the film together, so it's great that both actors were nominated for their performances. They worked really well together and have good chemistry.

The film was also really well-written, which was shown in the development of the characters and the way they progressed, whether positively or negatively.

Ultimately though, despite all of this, the film never really captured or held my interest. Nothing that happened was particularly entertaining, I wasn't interested in the characters, and the tone never worked for me.

So overall, while I'm really glad both Stan and Strong got nominations, the film itself wasn't for me.

4.5/10