ADAMS: “The Apprentice” vs. Angel Studios: What Happens When Actual Filmmakers Give a Shit
I watched The Apprentice and Sound of Freedom back to back. One was fearless, bold, and beautifully made. The other was a lazy, dishonest mess that disrespects its own subject matter.
Sebastian Stan as young Donald Trump in The Apprentice (2024), lit dramatically in a tense, moody, retro-styled setting. Photo credit: ScreenRant
Last night, I watched The Apprentice on Blu-ray. Not some janky screener or a pixelated torrent, the real thing, legally bought, because I believe in supporting actual artists when they make art worth watching. And let me be completely honest with you: The Apprentice is one of the best films I’ve seen in years. Full stop.
It’s bold. It’s stylistically unique. It says something real and unflinching, and it says it with craft. The cinematography? Stunning. They made it look like it came out in the '70s, not just through filters or aspect ratios, but in how it moves, how it lingers, how it breathes. It’s cinema. This is easily the best performance of Sebastian Stan’s career. The range on display here is ridiculous. He doesn’t just “play” Trump—he embodies him without falling into caricature. It’s magnetic and unsettling. But what impressed me most wasn’t just the aesthetics or the performances, it was the audacity.
The film doesn’t try to find some cutesy, safe moral middle ground. It doesn’t soften the story to make it more palatable for cable news pundits or partisan filmgoers. It calls out a currently sitting U.S. President—by name—for his well-documented, heinously racist past, and it does so without flinching. There’s no “both sides.” There’s no sanitizing. It tells the truth and lets that truth sit with you like a weight on your chest. That’s rare these days. That’s what filmmaking is supposed to be.
Now contrast that with Sound of Freedom, a film I actually happened to go and see in theatres back when it was making headlines—for all the wrong reasons.
The Worst Movie I’ve Ever Sat Through
A poster for Sound of Freedom (2023) showing a man holding a child, another standing boldly, with bold title text. Photo credit: Clio Melody
Without bias, as a film lover, I need to say this clearly: Sound of Freedom is one of the most disrespectful, insulting, manipulative pieces of ‘cinema’ I think I have ever had the misfortune of having sat through. Two hours of my life I will never get back.
Setting aside the real-life politics of the man who inspired it (and honestly, the less said about that guy the better), this movie is just not well-made. It’s not well-written. It’s not emotionally honest. It’s not even technically competent in the way a movie should be. It feels rushed. Flat. Disconnected. The message sucks, and the people making it don’t seem to care whether they’re telling the truth—because they’re not.
A Message Built on Lies
They completely misrepresent the issue of human trafficking. In their world, it’s always some anonymous creep in a white van, some underground tunnel operation from a comic book. 1980 called and wants their trope back. The truth is much darker, much sadder, and far less cinematic: the overwhelming majority of kids trafficked into these horrific situations are abused by family members or close family friends. People they know. People they trust. But the film doesn’t go there. Why? Because it doesn’t fit the narrative they want to push onto viewers. And spoiler alert: the “hero” in Sound of Freedom saves one child. Just one. The others? Left behind. And the movie doesn’t even attempt to grapple with that morally. If we take the real guy at his word, he knowingly chose not to help the rest. That’s not a heroic moment—that’s a complete and total failure that the film has the audacity to try and spin as a win.
No One Watched It (Not Even the Right)
Meanwhile, the studio behind it—Angel Studios—spent more time on marketing gimmicks than on making a good or coherent film. You couldn’t scroll two seconds on right-wing Twitter or Truth Social without some grifter telling you to “buy tickets to support the mission.” But here's the kicker: no one actually watched it. I don’t know a single person in real life who even knew this movie existed. Not one. Because it didn’t really “exist” in any meaningful cultural way. It was astroturfed into trending by a handful of influencers and partisan hacks who cared more about owning the libs than watching the damn movie. Sound of Freedom wasn’t made to tell a meaningful story or resonate with anyone—it was made to be a partisan talking point, chewed up by the culture war machine and discarded as soon as the news cycle moved on.
Reagan: A Glossy Rewrite of a Bleak Reality
A poster for Reagan (2024) showing Dennis Quaid in a cowboy hat, gazing ahead, with bold title text and sunset skies. Photo credit: IMDB
And then there’s Reagan. A different kind of failure, but a failure all the same.
On paper, it’s a biopic. In execution, it’s the kind of movie that goes out of its way to avoid telling the truth. It’s propaganda that’s dishonest by design. A polished, puffed-up PR reel for a man who did real, lasting damage to the United States. This is the man who obliterated labor protections, laughed off the AIDS crisis, and waged class war with a smile on his face, and this film treats him like a misunderstood dad from a Hallmark movie. Sure, Dennis Quaid is a decent actor. I’m not out here trying to drag the man’s entire career. He’s had his hits. But Reagan was not one of them. The movie only seemed to resonate with people who already had a soft spot for the man—a nostalgic relic for boomers who still think “trickle down” was a great idea.
And just like with Sound of Freedom, it only really existed in a vacuum: people weren’t seeing it because they were interested in films. They were seeing it because it reaffirmed something they already believed, or at least, wanted to believe.
The Anti-Audience Effect
The connective tissue between Sound of Freedom and Reagan isn’t just political leaning—it’s creative laziness dressed up as ideological urgency. These films weren’t made with audiences in mind, at least not in the traditional sense. They were made for anti-audiences—not to be enjoyed, but to be weaponized. The goal wasn’t to move anyone emotionally or intellectually; it was to provoke outrage, to stir up culture war talking points, and to be talked about by people who, in most cases, didn’t even bother watching them. They’re not films—they’re content. Algorithm fodder. Performative gestures masquerading as meaningful work.
There’s no real emotional core, no sense of craft, and certainly no artistic risk involved. They exist to confirm biases, not challenge perspectives. You can feel the disinterest in every frame—they don’t care about cinema, and they barely care about their own message, assuming they actually did care in the first place. They just want attention. And that’s what makes them so dishonest.
The Apprentice Shows What Happens When You Care
Which brings me back to The Apprentice. Because that film? That’s what happens when you put actual artists in charge of telling a story they believe in. It doesn’t hide. It doesn’t compromise. It doesn’t waste your time. It takes a subject as controversial as Donald Trump and explores it with both anger and nuance, daring you to wrestle with what it shows you. That’s not just bravery—that’s cinema.
And yes, I’m progressive. But I’m judging these films not on ideology, but on merit. On their willingness to tell a story honestly, with care, with depth. The Apprentice was unapologetic—not for shock value, not to start shit on X, but because it had a story to tell and the guts to tell it right. And when talentless partisan hacks try to make movies—when they don’t give a shit about art, or story, or even truth—you end up with hollow garbage like Sound of Freedom.
Because at the end of the day, if you don’t give a shit about your message, no one else will either. And no one wants to watch a movie that doesn’t care.