Succession showrunner Jesse Armstrong's dystopian feature film debut, premiering on HBO, has "timely resonance" in this "high-tech moment".

What if tech bros ruled the world? What if they already do? Jesse Armstrong's close-to-reality satire, Mountainhead, exposes that thin line between those actually holding government power and those pulling the strings behind it. It is the first film directed as well as written by the creator of Succession, and offers a reminder that before that brilliant drama about power, capitalism and family dysfunction, he was a writer on pointed political comedies including The Thick of It and the film In the Loop. Mountainhead, directed with a smooth confidence that shows Armstrong's experience, moves deftly from a satiric drama in its first half to absurdist black comedy in the second.

It focuses on four tycoons, good friends on the surface but cutthroat underneath, who gather for a poker weekend at the luxurious home of the poorest of them, the one who is only worth half a billion dollars. Where Succession took a long view of power and media manipulation, Mountainhead is made to have timely resonance in this high-tech moment. Armstrong only began shooting the film in March and here it is.

Armstrong has brilliantly cast those four characters, who all have agendas for the weekend and try to hide them from each other. Jason Schwartzman is Hugo, the host and creator of a meditation app, angling to get one of his friends to invest a billion or so in his business. Steve Carell is Randy, whose contacts in Washington, DC can influence the military and the country's power grid. Diagnosed with incurable cancer, he can't believe money can't fix that, but hopes to cheat death by getting his friends to create an artificial intelligence able to upload a human brain. Ramy Youssef is Jeff, whose company has a superefficient AI, and who appears to be the most humane of the four (which isn't saying much). But the most striking character is Ven (Cory Michael Smith), the owner of a social media app called Traan. Together they are an amalgam of tech tycoons such as Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg. But Ven pointedly and unmistakably evokes Elon Musk, however different Smith's look and manner. Ven is the world's richest man, who owns a social media platform that reaches four billion users and who gets a phone call from the US president (unnamed and unheard) while at Hugo's.........

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