Mountainhead - Review 

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

SUCCESSION creator Jesse Armstrong doesn’t stray too far from the familiar with his first post-series project, the HBO backed Mountainhead. But while trading on the familiar brings a welcome safety, it also invites easy comparisons that might not always be kind.

Where Succession’s examination of wealth amid the 1%-ers trailblazed in often spectacular fashion, Mountainhead - perhaps by virtue of being a stand-alone movie - feels as though it is lacking in something.

It’s still sharp, balancing acerbic wit with cutting insight into wealth and its destructive, elitist sensibility. And it has something meaningful to say about the threats posed by tech and AI, that enables it to be prescient.

But the humanity that eventually informed so much of Succession is missing - the characters on show hear singularly lacking in sympathy because their condensed story is so dramatically lacking in humanity.

The story follows four hideously rich friends as they convene for a weekend of ego stroking at the mountain-based home of the poorest among them, the multi-millionaire Soup (Jason Schwartzman), who pines to break into the billionaire club.

There’s also venture capitalist Randall (Steve Carell), a billionaire desperately seeking immortality in the wake of his own cancer diagnosis, fellow AI wunderkind Jeff (Ramy Youssef), who controls a new fact-checking capable AI that could allow social media users to decipher truth from misinformation at the click of a button, and Venis (Cory Michael Smith), an AI company CEO (of a social media giant called Tramm) and the richest person in the world with deeply narcissistic and nihilistic tendencies.

Their gathering takes place against the backdrop of a world on fire - as nation by nation face civil unrest, uprisings and financial meltdown in the wake of the misinformation and fake news being peddled at an alarming rate by uncensored Tramm users.

As each new incident of violent rebellion or financial collapse arrives via the ping of a text, the four friends playfully muse about their role in proceedings and how they could intervene, inviting ideas of world domination at the same time as brainstorming plans for the post-human future (ie transferring human consciousness into AI hosts).

But things taken an even darker turn when they begin to turn on each other, with Jeff especially targeted over his reluctance to sell his game-changing tech to Venis.

To a certain extent, Armstrong positions his principal players as some kind of modern Greek Gods… their Mountainhead retreat some kind of Olympian enclave.

But there’s also more contemporary nods to the tech giants of today - most notably in Venis’ obvious parallels to Elon Musk. But also with awareness of the likes of Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, if they were completely informed by the policies of Trump and his henchmen.

Greed is therefore the order of the day, along with toxic masculinity and planetary exploitation. They consider themselves part of a natural order whose only concern is to succeed in bringing about the next chapter of civilization’ no matter the cost (in human or environmental terms). There creed goes beyond ‘survival of the fittest’ to ‘survival of the richest’, with little or no room spared for the suffering being experienced below.

If the outcome is success, then the cost is worth it.

Early on, Armstrong’s film genuinely engages on a Black Mirror-style ‘what if?’ kind of scenario, further drawing comparison to the likes of Ex_Machina for the way in which it pre-empts a world dictated by the wealthy few, driven by tech and false information.

There’s something grimly real to both the discourse and the news that filters through - the spirit of events such as the Southport riots and the Black Lives Matter movement looming large.

But as the second half of the film shifts away from that and becomes more concerned with the murderous intentions of the foursome within the house, the story starts to unravel somewhat, as does the investment.

Part of the problem lies in the sheer dislikeability of the protagonists, which makes it nigh on impossible to root for anyone, let alone care. Armstrong attempts to compensate by weaving in some darkly absurdist comedy, as the situation escalates, but he can’t recapture the intensity of the first half.

That said, performance-wise, the film consistently delivers with all four leads on great form. Schwartzman, in particular, gets a lot of laughs for his weaker character - desperately trying to be the perfect host while desperately craving that billionaire boost; while Smith is all kinds of horrible as Venis, a megalomaniac on speed.

But Carell’s Randall is arguably the most sinister of the lot… a seething manipulator who has a hateful streak that doesn’t make him afraid to manipulate even his closest friends to achieve his own self-serving agenda.

As you would also expect, Armstrong’s script contains all kind of witty zingers - “what does a fake exploding head look like?” - and comes at you at a rate of knots that require maximum attention in order to keep up (especially during the technical stuff).

But while cynical on the extreme, in worse ways than even Succession could manage, there’s certainly a grim fascination in seeing just how far these men will go (or how low they’ll stoop), which makes Mountainhead a worthwhile investment of time that’s also capable of setting a few alarm bells ringing given its proximity to the world in which we’re living in.