Tech bros go wild while wrecking the world in “Mountainhead,” writer-director Jesse Armstrong’s follow-up to his towering series about a different set of rich assholes, “Succession.”
This ain’t that. Armstrong’s feature-directing debut does not have the bandwidth to develop searing character studies like four, intricately interwoven seasons of an all-time television great. “Mountainhead” plays more like oligarch burlesque, but although the movie’s central roles are 2-D representations of real-life moguls (and attitudes) that we’re all learning to fear, it doesn’t mean they aren’t richly written.
Armstrong crams just about every strategy and justification late capitalism can produce into densely packed dialogue that the film’s core quartet of actors make sound remarkably organic. Obsessions with acquisition and amoral innovation unfold as fast as these guys deflect blame from any resulting consequences and mistake themselves for gods.
The self-described Brewsters are:
Randall (Steve Carell), the venture capitalist “Papa Bear” of the group who has faith — which the doctors he keeps firing do not share — that technology will beat a recurring tumor.
Venis (Cory Michael Smith, who was spookily perfect as Chevy Chase in last year’s “Saturday Night” movie and just plain spooky as “Gotham’s” The Riddler), a borderline sociopath who’s quite pleased that the new deepfake tool on his social media platform Traam is triggering sectarian violence, economic panic and government collapses worldwide.
Jeff (Ramy Youssef), the only one with a functioning moral compass, as well as a proprietary AI that may be the sole guardrail against the Traam-caused chaos. He might be persuaded to sell it to the highest bidder.
And Hugo Van Yalk (Jason Schwartzman), who his buddies call Souper. He’s hosting what he had hoped would be an old friends’ poker weekend before the turmoil broke out. There wasn’t supposed to be any dealmaking. But, being the only non-billionaire of the bunch, he does have this idea for what could be so much more than a meditation app …
The whole shindig and most of the movie takes place at Souper’s new, isolated megamansion in the Utah mountains. The architecturally questionable structure shares the film’s name and all but one letter with Ayn Rand’s ubermensch novel (yet sounds even more aggrandizing). That’s no accident; it’s a great title and setting for a story about four guys who feel it’s their right to ruin, reshape and take over society.
Armstrong structures their interactions well. The guys go from not-so-passive-aggressive ballbusting upon arrival to hugging out old grievances. Then, before anything too much like human affection can take hold, secret alliances, ludicrous — if not entirely unjustified — paranoia, and inept attempts at physical violence take over. A group snowmobile romp turns into a “bonding” comparison of net worth. No matter how often they profess bro-therly love for one another, these dudes are always in some kind of competition.
And that’s just among themselves, peers they relate to and ostensibly like. When the sheeple outside their circle pierce the guys’ attention bubbles — reports of mobs burning occupied buildings and political assassinations fill their phone feeds while explosions burst all over wall-mounted plasma screens — the quartet’s cavalier dismissals are only matched for heartlessness by their plans to profit off the madness.
“This is so hyper-real it can’t be real,” Venis reviews a video of a head blowing apart.
“You’re always going to get some people dead,” Randall says of landmark societal shifts or maybe just big entertainment events, which he seems to view as interchangeable. “I mean, eight to ten cardiac arrests during the Super Bowl.”
While Smith superficially appears to be portraying the Muskiest of the bunch — big social media owner, unfamiliar with common behavior, his sole emotional concern a custody battle over a toddler — his real model is more Gila monster. Venis is the quickest, sharpest, most ruthless and, therefore, the most memorably watchable. Poker-faced in a bloodcurdling way, Smith’s performance is also a comic gem of egocentricity.
Carell locates a sadder, if no less terrifying, megalomania in Randall. Letting all in earshot know how seriously he takes Hegel and Kant, Randall’s ultimate dream goes past world domination to achieving post-human consciousness – for all who survive this moment, but for himself first. With financial fingers in a zillion power centers, Randall blithely speculates on whether the Brewsters should take over El Salvador as a dry run or just go straight for the U.S. and China. With impressive subtlety and judicious outbursts of rage, Carell doesn’t let us forget these are the thrashings of a condemned man’s mind.
Youssef finds strength in what the others consider a weak-willed character. While the greed that fuels all of these guys makes Jeff’s ethical stances wobbly, he’s good at racking up wins and getting what he wants when nobody’s looking — even after circumstances place him in the most imperiled of positions. The way Youssef handles Jeff’s unfaithful girlfriend is kind of sublime; he registers embarrassment but doesn’t seem too broken up. Money is more important.
As Souper, Schwartzman goes the obvious route of making the people-pleaser type easily influenced and indecisive, but he does so with such specificity it feels like a fresh, distinctive choice. Taking over Argentina may prove frustrating for a guy like him, though. He really just wanted for a fun weekend catching up on personal stuff with his pals.
And business, Souper tangentially but significantly adds, since these geniuses really don’t have a lot going on in the personal department. Like all Armstrong characters, the masters of the “Mountainhead” universe spin in repetitive behavioral patterns without learning anything about themselves. This yields more depth and detail in an extended format like “Succession’s,” and doesn’t make for the most satisfying ending after less than two hours here.
But it’s a fine mechanism for farce, which “Mountainhead” is a highly verbal and intelligent form of. If we can’t laugh at how rich pricks are destroying everything, there truly is no hope.
“Mountainhead” premieres Saturday, May 31, on HBO and Max.