“So,you want to work for Uber,” says Kalanick (Joseph Gordon-Levitt),introducing himself to the audience and a prospective hire. “Well,I have one question for you:are you an asshole?” The desired answer,obviously,is yes. Kalanick is a bull in a regulatory China shop,committing to his ride-sharing company with a messianic zeal. “We don’t have time for safety bullshit,” he declares as Uber takes shape in 2011 San Francisco,crossing the line between commitment and culpability before it’s barely defined.
This amoral belief in business as war and generating “100 times” returns for investors is not a new mindset for a boardroom protagonist,but the delicious friction inSuper Pumped (adapted from the 2019 non-fiction book of the same name by Mike Isaac) stems from how deeply the show’s architects,Brian Koppelman and David Levien,understand their subject. Having createdBillions’ duplicitous hedge-fund billionaire Bobby Axelrod,they explicitly know the origins and obsessions of mogul mayhem.
EchoingThe Wolf of Wall Street,every Kalanick staff speech is a call to arms,and every milestone gets a Bacchanalian montage. The chief executive creates the company’s gravity,pulling offsiders into questionable strategies and making legal transgressions inconsequential with a fist bump. The season’s aesthetic knowingly goes full bro:Quentin Tarantino is a foul-mouthed narrator and Uber’s move into New York is depicted as a video game that culminates with Kalanick fighting top boss Mayor Bill de Blasio.
The counterpoint is Bill Gurley (Kyle Chandler),the venture capital luminary who bankrolled Kalanick but starts to wonder if the reputational damage is worth the potential profit. The dance between the two men,moving from mentorship to adversarial,is a thoughtful study in the masculine dynamic.Super Pumped is full of big characters,but it has enough insights to make the storytelling incisive. It’s wise to Kalanick’s ways:watch how it recreates his lies as he spun them,before showing the callous,mundane reality. This takedown is an inside job.
Conversations with Friends ★★★½
Amazon Prime