‘The Phoenician Scheme’: Wes Anderson’s Macho Whimsy

Genteel thriller The Phoenician Scheme is Wes Anderson’s most single-minded, plot-driven, self-mocking movie in years—a propulsive hoot that inevitably indulges but rarely dwells on precious tangents and eccentric caricatures. It’s a fussy film starring someone who doesn’t do twee: ever-macho Benicio del Toro, who juices this Anderson joint with a jolt of masculine vigor that’s been missing from the overdesigned auteur’s precious pictures since Gene Hackman bulldozed his way through The Royal Tenenbaums.

THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME  ★★★★ (4/5 stars)
Directed by: Wes Anderson
Written by: Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola
Starring: Benicio del Toro, Mia Threapleton, Michael Cera, Riz Ahmed, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Mathieu Amalric, Richard Ayode, Jeffrey Wright, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch
Running time: 105 mins

Last seen in the Anderson-verse as an imprisoned madman painter in The French Dispatch, del Toro here plays Anatole “Zsa-Zsa” Korda, a wildly wealthy and ruthless European industrialist of unspecified ethnicity and unremarked origin happily unmoored from national allegiance. “I don’t live anywhere,” he explains. “I’m not a citizen at all. I don’t need human rights.” Shady business is his forte, earning him the nickname “Mister 5%” for the regular commission he takes. Korda’s enemies are legion, as are the assassination attempts against his life. This must be the first Anderson movie where a person gets ripped in half within the first five minutes. And the first where its protagonist carries around a crate of grenades like they were fresh fruit.

After surviving his sixth sabotaged plane crash, Korda has a change of heart about his life choices, and summons long-neglected daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton) from her nunnery to become his sole heir. She wants none of it, doesn’t trust him and isn’t impressed with any of his accomplishments—although her Mother Superior (Hope Davis) points out that the money could do good works.

So she reluctantly agrees, and Korda takes her—along with his new hire, Norwegian tutor/entomologist Bjørn Lund (Michael Cera, vocally channeling both Max Von Sydow and the Swedish Chef)—to firm up all the partnerships in his greatest and most costly venture yet: an enormous land and sea infrastructure venture that stretches across the entirety of fictional North African country Phoenicia and involves trains, planes, boats, railways, dams, major real estate deals and an impressive amount of indentured laborers. They outline all of this in meticulously-organized shoeboxes, of course, because Business Whimsy. Only hitch is that Korda needs a not-insignificant amount of money to seal the deal, so he has to sweet-talk his partners into chipping in more than they agreed to. And they’re not very agreeable people.

Enter a very Andersonian cast of fastidiously tailored oddballs, including Prince Farouk (Riz Ahmed), Marseille Bob (Mathieu Amalric), Cousin Hilda (Scarlett Johansson), California businessmen Leland (Tom Hanks) and Reagan (Bryan Cranston), fast-talking cargo ship magnate Marty (Jeffrey Wright), revolutionary terrorist Sergio (Richard Ayode), and possibly homicidal millionaire Uncle Nubar (Benedict Cumberbatch). Also prep for highly delineated world-building with Lower Western Independent Phoenicia’s Trans-mountain Locomotive Tunnel, Upper Eastern Independent Phoenicia’s Trans-desert Inland Waterway, and the Trans-basin Hydroelectric Embankment in the domain of the Hilda Sussman-Korda Private Utopian Outpost, Middle Independent Phoenicia.

Like most of Anderson’s later films, The Phoenician Scheme feels like yet another hermetically sealed live-action graphic novel, specifically the latest entry in Belgian cartoonist Hergé’s exotic globe-trotting series of adventures with boy detective Tintin—vivid characters all drawn with crisp lines to capture their dapper wardrobes and meticulously detailed surroundings.

But del Toro’s soulful verve punches through all the artful artifice, giving The Phoenician Scheme the kind of pulse-racing sense of fun that his more dormant movies lack. Threapleton is also a revelation: her perennially skeptical, sardonic Liesl, reluctantly giving into the world’s temptations while keeping her father’s love at bay, adds just the right gimlet eye to the proceedings, with a bullshit detector that’s never self-pitying or self-indulgent. And Cera, so preternaturally quirky as to be custom-made for Anderson’s WASP ensembles, is more winsome than wincing—just cock-eyed enough to puncture all the affectation.

Best of all, instead of sharing Royal Tenenbaums’s tragic end, Zsa-Zsa Korda instead finds his way to a chaotic but ultimately happy ending, one where paternal love conquers all in an unadorned style—simple, humble, hard-earned, and authentically human. It might just be one of Anderson quietest and most powerful finales. No scheming necessary.