But the latest update to Venis’ platform, named Traam, is causing havoc. As the four gather at Hugo’s isolated perch in the Utah mountains, news reports describe violence sweeping across Asia due to an outbreak of deepfakes on Traam that have wrecked any sense of reality. Yet what’s real for this quartet of digital oligarchs - none of whom has a seemingly direct reallife corollary, all of whom are immediately recognizable - is more to the point of “Mountainhead,” a frightfully credible comedy about the delusions of tech utopianism. Each of the four, with the exception of some hesitancy on the part of Jeff, are zealous futurist. On the way to Mountainhead, a doctor gives Randall a fatal diagnosis that he outright refuses. “All the things we can do and we can’t fix one tiny little piece of gristle in me?”

There are beefs, hug-it-out moments, passive-aggressive put downs and eruptions of anger. Part of the fun of Armstrong’s film isn’t just how their behavior spills into a geopolitical events but how it manifests, for example, in which room everyone gets. All of “Mountainhead” unfolds in the one location, with white mountaintops stretching in the distance outside the fl oor-to-ceiling windows. It could be a play. Instead, though, it’s something that either hardly exists anymore or, maybe, exists everywhere: the made-for-TV movie. There’s no lack of films made for streaming services, but many of them fall into some in-between aesthetic that couldn’t fill a big screen and feel a touch disposable on the small screen. But “Mountainhead” adheres to the tradition of the HBO movie; it’s lean, topical and a fine platform for its actors. And for Armstrong, it’s a way to keep pursuing some of the timely themes of “Succession” while dispensing lines like: “Coup-out the US? That’s a pretty big enchilada.” “Mountainhead,” an HBO Films release, is unrated by the Motion Picture Association. Running time: 109 minutes. Three stars out of four.