The Apprentice (2024)
Directed by Ali Abbasi
No — The Apprentice is not especially woke, scoring 34 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
Here is a film that arrives carrying the weight of a thousand op-eds and then, to its credit, declines to shout.
Consciousness Markers
Roy Cohn's closeted homosexuality, his orgy scene, his lover Russell, and the AIDS crisis are substantial plot elements, though presented as tragic historical fact rather than advocacy.
The film is steeped in the corruption of the real-estate world — tax abatements bought through blackmail, union-busting, 'welfare queen' rhetoric, and the moral rot of wealth — giving it a strong eat-the-rich undercurrent.
The film opens on the federal housing-discrimination case against Fred Trump and shows Cohn blackmailing the prosecutor to bury evidence of racism against Black tenants, but race is a plot device rather than a sustained theme.
Ivana is given agency as an influential figure in the Trump Organization, and the film depicts Trump's misogyny and marital rape critically, but it is a portrait of sexism rather than a feminist thesis.
The film reframes Trump's origin as a Frankenstein tale of Cohn's creation, a pointed reinterpretation of a familiar narrative, though it claims grounding in rigorous research rather than ideological rewriting.
Abbasi deliberately avoids farce and cartoonish moralizing, aiming for a humanistic character study that holds up a mirror rather than delivering a sermon.
The cast is overwhelmingly white and drawn from the historical record; Maria Bakalova (Bulgarian) and Sebastian Stan (Romanian) bring some non-American background, but there is no deliberate diversity-casting agenda.
No environmental or climate themes appear anywhere in the film.
The film dwells on Trump's weight, baldness, liposuction, and amphetamine use, and on Ivana's breast enlargement — the opposite of a body-positive message.
No neurodivergence themes are present.
Why it received this score
Here is a film that arrives carrying the weight of a thousand op-eds and then, to its credit, declines to shout. Ali Abbasi's study of the young Donald Trump and his tutor in ruthlessness, Roy Cohn, is a chilly chamber piece about the manufacture of a certain American temperament. The direction is patient. The performances are precise. The film wants to hold a mirror up, not to hand out leaflets, and it mostly succeeds.
The social consciousness on display is real but subordinate to the drama. A federal housing-discrimination case against Fred Trump opens the picture, and Cohn's blackmail of the prosecutor buries the evidence of racism against Black tenants, though the film treats this as one more piece of rot in the machinery, not a thesis. Cohn's closeted homosexuality, his orgies, his lover Russell, and the arrival of AIDS form a substantial and genuinely tragic strand. Ivana is allowed her own ambition and influence, and the film regards Trump's misogyny and the marital rape with cold clarity. This is a portrait of sexism, not a tract about it.
Where the film leans hardest is its contempt for money and the people who accumulate it. Tax abatements bought through blackmail, union-busting, welfare-queen rhetoric, the casual cruelty of evicting a dying man from a hotel: the corruption is the point. The body, meanwhile, is treated as an object of horror, all liposuction, scalp reduction, amphetamines, and a requested breast enlargement, which is the opposite of any affirming message. There is no climate anxiety here, no neurodivergence, and mercifully little sermonizing. The film trusts us to draw the conclusion. We do.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
A young Donald Trump, eager to make his name as a hungry scion of a wealthy family in 1970s New York, comes under the spell of Roy Cohn, the cutthroat attorney who would help create the Donald Trump we know today. Cohn sees in Trump the perfect protégé—someone with raw ambition, a hunger for success, and a willingness to do whatever it takes to win.
Questions about The Apprentice
Is The Apprentice woke?
No — The Apprentice is not especially woke, scoring 34 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Based.
Does The Apprentice have any woke elements?
4 of the 10 markers register at 30 or above, led by Eat the Rich (45), LGBTQ+ Themes (45) and Racial Consciousness (35). On Eat the Rich: The film is steeped in the corruption of the real-estate world — tax abatements bought through blackmail, union-busting, 'welfare queen' rhetoric, and the moral rot of wealth — giving it a strong eat-the-rich undercurrent.
How does The Apprentice compare to other 2024 movies?
It ranks #29 of the 189 films from 2024 we've scored; their average is 22. The wokest is The Six Triple Eight (92).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.