Roush Review: A Toxic Billionaire Bro Conclave in HBO’s Timely ‘Mountainhead’

Matt Roush May 30, 2025, 10:00 am

Comments

Mountainhead

Matt's Rating:

How does one follow up a groundbreaking show like Succession? If you’re the multiple Emmy-winning writer-director Jesse Armstrong, you stay in your discomfort zone with another trenchant, darkly funny, and despairing exposé of the toxically rich and smugly super-famous.

I wish HBO made more stand-alone movies (pretty much a lost TV art) like Armstrong’s Mountainhead, and I’m glad this isn’t a series pilot or even a limited series. While the smartly written and superbly acted film is generally as entertaining as it is chilling, I don’t think I could abide another minute in these boastfully banal billionaire bros’ company. The movie unfolds like a play, mostly confined within the plush but arid Utah mountaintop mansion of Hugo Van Yalk (a simpering Jason Schwartzman), a mere multi-millionaire hosting and sucking up to his preening guests, masters of a universe currently being destroyed by their tech empires.

Hugo’s derogatory nickname is Soups, short for “Soup Kitchen,” a reflection of his position on the monetary food chain. While Soups slathers his wealthier and more influential friends with attention, while desperately pitching a wellness meditation app they mock but could all probably benefit from, the tech titans observe from afar a world in a state of collapse. The culprit: new AI deepfake tools generated by the social-media platform owned by the visionary Venis (Gotham‘s Cory Michael Smith), who debates whether to take responsibility — or more likely advantage — of the mayhem created when nation turns against nation, causing global market instability.

Also watching the planet burn while they revel in busting each other’s chops: dying venture capitalist Randall (Steve Carell, terrific), who’d rather his buddies focus on developing “post-human” tech that would allow him to upload his consciousness to the web, and left-leaning entrepreneur Jeff (Ramy Youssef), who’s developed a filter that could put guardrails on Venis’s reckless creation and refuses to sell out to his untrustworthy rival. They’ve gathered for a “poker night” weekend, but the game they’re really playing involves a stacked deck of hubris. Even Jeff, who warns, “This is not a champagne moment,” has to admit his “stock price is nuts off the chaos,” as his net worth keeps rising (eclipsing Randall’s at one point) while the world falls apart and they keep the frantic U.S. president on hold.

'Succession' Star Kieran Culkin Looks Back on Amazing Cut Scene

They believe, and they’re probably not wrong, that their transformational tech products and insane riches have rendered them more powerful than POTUS, and from their lofty perch, they begin to plot world domination. And, inevitably, against each other. As Mountainhead shifts gears into a primal and ferocious battle of wills, the cautionary allegory becomes a deadly knockabout farce. Serves them right.

And if we don’t all wake up and look away from our screens to take measure of what’s really happening in these topsy-turvy times, we also may deserve what we get.

Mountaintop, Movie Premiere, Saturday, May 31, 8/7c, HBO