Despite my disdain for Trump, I tried to go into this one as objectively as possible, and judge it based not on how good/effective it is at confirming my own opinion of Trump, but on how good/effective it is simply as a movie.
To that end, I saw it tonight... and it's a damn solid effort, one that's even genuinely funny/entertaining at times (though a drama for sure).
But at two hours I actually wish it was longer. While the first half is exceptional (where Trump is way more sympathetic), the second half - Trump's rise - feels a bit rushed and glossed over. The first half, set in the mid-to-late '70s, is also shot on what appears to be 16 mm film, and looks so much better than the second half, which mostly looks to be shot on VHS, to try and capture the '80s aesthetic.
Big picture, though, it's basically the story of how attorney Roy Cohn (played brilliantly by Jeremy Strong) created a monster in Trump. Trump starts out green/"innocent" enough - it seems all he wants in life is to return 1970's, ****-hole New York to its former glory - but once he makes a deal with the devil in Cohn to do so, it starts him down a path of no return. Don't get me wrong, Trump isn't portrayed as an angel or anything in the first half - he's still money-hungry and braggadocios - but the movie does surprisingly paint him as somewhat of a "lovable," do-whatever-it-takes underdog, before Cohn ultimately realizes what he's unleashed.
In that sense, if Cohn is evil/bizarro Obi-Wan, Trump is very much his Anakin/Vader.
The biggest surprise for me was just how good Sebastian Stan is as Trump. It's not a spot-on impersonation by any means, but man does he increasingly embody Trump's overall vibe, gestures, and speaking patterns to an uncanny degree at times. It's just a really cool, slowly morphing effect, almost, to watch his gradual transformation into the Trump we know today.
Overall, while it's definitely a little too obvious and on-the-nose at times, some of you will be happy to know that it doesn't really come across as a political movie at all, nor does it even feel like it's judging Trump, at least in the heavy-handed, liberal-finger-wagging way some might expect. Yes, it's clearly saying these two *******s - Trump and Cohn - were made for each other, and got what was coming to varying degrees. But it's not dripping in sanctimonious outrage either.
Anyway, it released tonight, and while I was certain it was going to be a limited release, I just checked and it's actually playing in both my hometown and in College Station, which indicates a way wider release than I was expecting. So if it's playing in a theater near you, which it most likely is, I definitely recommend giving it a shot. It's nothing amazing or award-winning, but it's probably a better movie than you might be expecting.
