Portside

When Succession premiered in the summer of 2018, viewers instantly ate up its delicious servings of the feuding, scheming Roy family. But even among fans, there was one area of debate: Sure, the Roys were horrible people, but was their monstrousness also incredibly funny? In other words, was the show a chilling drama or a cutting dark comedy? Audiences may ask the same question—albeit, in reverse—after watching Mountainhead, the feature-length HBO film written and directed by Succession creator Jesse Armstrong.

A wry smackdown of four insanely rich bros hanging out at a gaudy estate in the Utah mountains, the movie generates a decent amount of laughs, but it’s best when Armstrong puts satire aside for rage, seething at the tech kingpins destroying our society to increase their profits. If Succession was a bitingly hilarious drama, Mountainhead is an ostensible comedy in which the laughs get caught in your throat.

Armstrong has assembled a strong quartet of actors, none of whom goes for the joke. Jason Schwartzman plays Hugo, who has invited his pals to Mountainhead, his utterly massive, totally ridiculous pad. (Before you ask: Yes, the estate’s name is a riff on the Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead. Tech bros are nothing if not the most obvious and witless of creatures.) Hugo wants to ensure that this weekend summit of “the Brewsters” will go off without a hitch, and Schwartzman brings a delightful little-brother insecurity to his performance. He has good reason to: Hugo has the lowest net worth of the foursome—”only” $521 million—and feels inadequate because he’s the one guy in the group not technically a billionaire. But he hopes to change that with an app that’s caught his eye, called Slowzo, which is one of those buzzy/ill-defined wellness promoters. It looks as phony as Hugo’s impossibly bleached-white teeth.

The film introduces the rest of the crew as they arrive. Steve Carell’s Randall is the oldest, his silver-fox handsomeness perfectly complemented by his wise-sage condescension. He’s been making millions since the other guys were in diapers, although he feels surpassed by the preening Venis (Cory Michael Smith), the richest Brewster at $220 billion, who runs the popular social-media platform Traam. Then there’s Jeff (Ramy Youssef), an AI whiz who recently had some friction with Venis after spouting off about him on a podcast. There’s still tension between them when they first see each other, but Venis is the sort of dude who will suggest, without irony, that they “hug it out.” With these four, apparently, it’s bros before world domination.

On Succession, Armstrong (who also co-wrote the films In The Loop and Four Lions) viciously skewered male competitiveness—the fact that men, after eons of evolution and enlightenment, still engage in petty rituals of one-upmanship to assert their dominance. Mountainhead‘s guys would have fit in well on that show, and the writer-director deserves continued kudos for not just mocking tech and media but, just as importantly, actually understanding how those spheres operate. As Hugo and his buddies catch up with one another, they speak in insider tech/financial lingo full of frightening phrases like “post-human.” They’re always on their phones or watching cable news, all of which communicates a constant clatter of sound bites about nations in crisis, economies in turmoil, and uprisings occurring in distant lands. Venis’ social-media platform is responsible for sowing misinformation that is exacerbating these anxieties, but he’s full of cocky self-denial, convinced he can’t be blamed. To the Brewsters, it’s all just a game, merely a question of how it balloons their bottomless fortunes.

Audiences won’t watch Mountainhead and easily be able to spot which real-life billionaire is represented by each fictional character. Traam may be this movie’s version of Twitter, but Venis is no Elon Musk. (Likewise, none of these guys is Jeff Bezos or David Zaslav.) And yet, viewers will know these men—that combination of arrogant, nerdy, and aloof that has come to personify the plutocrats who walk amongst us. Not that Armstrong allows the Brewsters to be simplistic types; he infuses Jeff with a sarcastic sense of humor and the faintest whiff of a moral compass, and Randall with a slight melancholy from perceiving that he’s a lion in winter around these young Turks. (Carell’s especially good when Randall discovers that the U.S. president wants to talk to Venis but not him. Even among the Brewsters, it hurts when you’re excluded from the cool club.)

Mountainhead‘s background buzz of potential global catastrophes eventually filters its way into the plot, which involves the Brewsters not seeing eye to eye on the best way to tackle these escalating societal emergencies. (It’s a testament to Armstrong’s perfectly hermetically-sealed universe that when these guys assume that they’re the ones who will determine what the planet should do, we believe them.) There are devious twists that shouldn’t be spoiled, but the narrative’s ultimate destination underlines Armstrong’s larger point about the callousness of our billionaire overlords—how everything, even human lives, is just a pragmatic business decision. 

The twists might be shockingly funny, but the writer-director and his cast don’t lean into that tone. Instead, there’s only an icy indifference that illustrates how far removed these bros are from the world, which they only see through the beautiful windows of Mountainhead: silent, snowy mountains in the distance—perfection on Earth, as long as you’re rich enough to afford the view.

To be sure, Mountainhead isn’t breaking new ground. This is currently a golden age of anti-upper-class cinema and television thanks to Parasite, Knives Out, and, of course, Succession. Watching four wealthy assholes trade quips is hardly revelatory. But although Armstrong is drawing on past strengths, he knows the milieu well enough, and his anger isn’t losing its potency. If the film has an MVP, it’s probably Smith, who transforms Venis—what a wonderfully stupid name—into a one-percenter bully with an aggressively punchable face. Forget Donald Trump, forget Stephen Miller, forget Kristi Noem: This is the worst, most powerful villain in our midst. Sure, Venis is fictional, but his real-world equivalents are everywhere. And Armstrong makes sure we know there’s nothing funny about them. 

Director: Jesse Armstrong
Writer: Jesse Armstrong
Starring: Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman, Cory Michael Smith, Ramy Youssef 
Release Date: May 31, 2025 (HBO, HBO Max)