The Phoenician Scheme Review: Wes Anderson Goes Back To The Basics (Sort Of)

The general rule for Wes Anderson movies is that each one is progressively more Wes Anderson-ian than the last. Whether that's a good or a bad thing is something every cinephile has decided for themselves. I think Anderson's talent blossomed upon delving into stop-motion animation with 2009's "Fantastic Mr. Fox," and I love how he's brought that heightened cartoon quality to subsequent live-action films. 2014's "The Grand Budapest Hotel" has my vote for his strongest work overall.

Where Anderson sometimes loses me is when his conceptual conceits get too elaborate for their own good. I was underwhelmed by "The French Dispatch," his attempt at combining 3.5 homages to New Yorker articles into a cinematic experience. "Asteroid City" had its moments of transcendence, but was generally baffling as a movie that's also a play that's also a TV documentary that's also a bimonthly curated box of snacks (that last bit was a "BoJack Horseman" joke involving Quentin Tarantulino, but Anderson would actually make that movie, wouldn't he?).

"The Phoenician Scheme" continues the escalation of Anderson's whimsical diorama aesthetic, but de-escalates the complicated structural conceits. It features Anderson's most straightforward storytelling since maybe 2012's "Moonrise Kingdom." Though its long string of wacky plot points might sound convoluted on paper, one shouldn't worry too much about it. The craziest details are mostly there for laughs, and the thematic and emotional through-lines that actually matter remain clear throughout. This is another one of Anderson's dysfunctional family stories, and one of his most focused, centering the relationship between Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro), a very bad father trying to figure out if he can become good; and Sister Liesl (Mia Threapleton — Kate Winslet's daughter), a very cynical daughter trying to figure out whether having any family is worth it.

Zsa-zsa Korda is objectively the most evil character Wes Anderson has ever centered a movie around. He's a weapons-dealing, famine-causing, slavery-supporting oligarch who rejects his own human rights and profits from every side of any given conflict. He's wanted in pretty much every country (his big crime against the United States is not paying tariffs, a joke that's aged like fine wine). If he was a real person, you'd hate him. But as the fast-talking, larger-than-life Wes Anderson equivalent of Tony Stark in the first "Iron Man?" He's fun to watch, both for the audacity of how he makes it out of countless life-threatening situations and for the way his brushes with mortality begin to stir in him something of a conscience.

"The Phoenician Scheme" opens on Zsa-zsa's sixth plane crash, a gleeful spectacle of comical violence that avoids true gruesomeness on the basis of Anderson's hyper-fake special effects. Before he gets up and packs some loose organs back into his belly, Zsa-zsa experiences a vision of his own funeral in an eerie black-and-white Heaven (you might wish to avoid spoilers for which Anderson regulars make cameos here). This close call with death inspires him to reconnect with his daughter Liesl, a nun who despises everything he stands for and suspects he killed her mother, but who agrees to test out serving as his heir. Liesl joins her father, along with his entomology tutor Bjørn (Michael Cera, stealing scenes with the best-worst Euro-accent ever), to seek out funding for the titular scheme, an elaborate construction project in the Middle East for which Zsa-zsa promises all slaves will be paid.

Zsa-zsa's prospective benefactors include a prince (Riz Ahmed), some basketball-playing brothers (Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston), a nightclub owner (Mathieu Amalric), a shipping magnate (Jeffrey Wright), a kibbutznik (Scarlet Johansson), and Zsa-zsa's even more evil brother (Benedict Cumberbatch). These supporting characters and others are eccentrically entertaining as any the filmmaker's assembled, but "The Phoenician Scheme" is less ensemble-focused than other Anderson pics. Its success, beyond the mid-century hipster "Looney Tunes" spectacle of it all, rests on how well Benicio del Toro and Mia Threapleton play off each other and how their characters push each other to evolve. Zsa-zsa picks up concepts of Christian morality from his daughter, while remaining complicated; he's neither fully redeemed nor condemned. Liesl, meanwhile, reluctantly finds herself appreciating her dad's taste in finery despite the ascetic impulse to reject it. It's the director offering a defense of his own opulence.

"The Phoenician Scheme" is an expertly crafted film in all the ways you expect from Wes Anderson. It's a Rube Goldberg machine of deadpan comedy, moving at a rapid speed with the closest thing to an action movie script Anderson has written. Everything from the sets to the costumes to the cinematography is impossibly perfect, each little classic art homage and funny piece of text in its proper place. The tension-building score mixes Igor Stravinsky with original pieces by Alexandre Desplat.

How substantial is the movie beyond its surface pleasures? On first impression, I'd say it's substantial enough. Maybe it's not Wes Anderson's deepest film, and it's not his best, but I still found it compelling as a character study and relationship piece with a curiosity about politics and spirituality. Its approachable heart heightens the appeal of the expected surface pleasures, making this the most I've enjoyed an Anderson film since 2018's "Isle of Dogs."

Before a second viewing, I'd be very interested to read more on the film from experts on Middle Eastern history. There's obviously some satire going on here about the West's history of meddling in the region, though Anderson forgoes explicit statements in favor of more general playful observation. There's an intriguing ideological messiness to a story wherein uber-capitalists, communist terrorists, and a moderate conservative masquerading as a bohemian all find common cause with one another. The movie is dedicated to Anderson's late father-in-law Fouad Mikhael Maalouf, who was born in the West Bank of Palestine and became something of a Korda-esque titan of industry in Lebanon. A deep dive into that personal connection to the material might yield greater depths than initially perceived.

"The Phoenician Scheme" opens in limited release on May 30 and in wide release on June 6.