The Apprentice: will biopic change how voters see Donald Trump?

A new film dramatising Donald Trump's rise to fame and fortune has provoked everything from an eight-minute standing ovation in Cannes to threats of legal action from the former president.

"The Apprentice", which opens in UK cinemas this week, examines Trump's career as a property mogul in New York in the 1970s and 1980s, mentored by the infamously ruthless lawyer Roy Cohn. It includes the disclaimer that portions were "fictionalised for dramatic purposes", said The Guardian, but the film nevertheless had to overcome "numerous roadblocks" to even get made.

'Most brutal Trump biopic imaginable'

Most controversially, "The Apprentice" contains a scene in which Trump, played by Marvel actor Sebastian Stan, sexually assaults his first wife Ivana (Maria Bakalova).

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In real life, she claimed during divorce proceedings that Trump had raped her but later downplayed the claim. In a 1993 statement, she said: "On one occasion during 1989, Mr Trump and I had marital relations in which he behaved very differently towards me than he had during our marriage. As a woman I felt violated… I referred to this as a rape, but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense."

It is, said Rolling Stone, "the most brutal Donald Trump biopic imaginable". Even without the "sickening" rape scene – presented unequivocally as "non-consensual, violent and a criminal act" – the film would still feel like a "damning portrait".

That might explain why Hollywood institutions were reluctant to finance the project, why it faced multiple legal threats from the Trump camp, and why the biggest investor, billionaire (and Trump supporter) Dan Snyder, allegedly threatened to kill it. He had been "under the impression that it was a flattering portrayal of the 45th president," said Variety. But when Snyder saw a final cut, he was "furious". The "cease-and-desist letters began flying".

On Truth Social this week Trump called it a "cheap, defamatory and politically disgusting hatchet job" designed to thwart his campaign for the US election.

Trump's campaign communications director has also threatened legal action, to "address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers", who "readily admit they fabricated scenes and created fake stories to fit some deranged narrative". Steven Cheung said in a statement: "This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalises lies that have been long debunked."

The film's director Ali Abbasi had previously told Vanity Fair that the filmmakers did not "get too anal about details and what's right and what's wrong". But screenwriter Gabriel Sherman told Entertainment Weekly that the "most shocking" moments in the film are "actually completely based on real events. "Very little has been dramatised," said Sherman, who has covered Trump for 20 years as a property reporter. "It's one of these stories where the truth is stranger than fiction."

'Almost shockingly sympathetic'

"The Apprentice" does portray Trump as "a rapist, a liar and a sketchy businessman who stiffs just about everyone", said Politico's Michael Schaffer. But it is "an almost shockingly sympathetic depiction". Rather than a "born psychopath", the character is a "striver who gradually loses his humanity". While there is plenty to "absolutely horrify" Trump's supporters, the character of Trump is "tragic, not evil".

"This is not a hit job on Trump," said Deadline. It is a portrait of a man "striving for the approval of a tough-love father, unsure but determined to succeed" – and he comes across as "even oddly charming at times".

Financing for the film actually "fell apart" several times because the depiction was deemed by liberal figures to be "too sympathetic" towards Trump, the director told NPR.

The film "felt emotionally true", said Tony Schwartz, co-author of Trump's book "The Art of the Deal", in The New York Times. "The Apprentice" is less about how Trump rose to power than "the generational impact of his family's trauma and dysfunction".

Nevertheless, this is a "muddy exercise in Trumpology that never answers the biggest question it raises", said Shirley Li in The Atlantic. What does chronicling Trump's origins tell us about "one of the most documented and least mysterious men" in recent history?

That is ultimately the film's undoing, said The Telegraph, and perhaps why it has "flopped", making a mere $1.6 million on its opening weekend in the US. It is unlikely to make any difference to the election, because the real Trump is already "familiar to every single voter".