The Phoenician Scheme Review: Symmetry, Style, And The Absurd: When Wes Anderson Stops Making Sense

Title: The Phoenician Scheme

Director: Wes Anderson

Cast: Benicio del Toro, Mia Threapleton, Michael Cera, Riz Ahmed, Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson

Where: In theatres near you

Rating: 2.5 Stars

In The Phoenician Scheme, Wes Anderson continues his meticulous descent into the whims of his own imagination—one symmetrical frame at a time. The result is a dazzlingly constructed, faintly hollow diorama of a film: beautiful to behold, mildly amusing to watch, and oddly unmoving to remember.

At the heart of this pastel fever dream is Zsa-Zsa Korda (Benicio Del Toro), a jet-setting industrialist with an apparent death wish and a penchant for collecting heirs like limited-edition stamps. After surviving his sixth plane crash, Korda resolves to install his nun-daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton) as the future captain of his sprawling infrastructure empire. What follows is a globe-trotting odyssey of bribes, banter, and business talk so deliberately oblique, it could only be considered negotiations in the Andersonian sense—flavoured more by whimsy than logic.

If the plot feels like an afterthought, that’s likely because it is. This is less a story than a scenic route through Wes-world: opulent sets, precision-blocked visuals, and cast members standing around like museum pieces in bespoke suits. And yet, for all the stylistic confidence, this film feels like an echo chamber. It’s Anderson riffing on Anderson, with each beat choreographed to the point of inertia.

Still, there are reasons to watch. Chief among them is Michael Cera as Bjorn, the insect-obsessed tutor whose quiet weirdness becomes the film’s unlikely anchor. Cera, whose soft bewilderment has rarely found a more accommodating environment, manages to bring something approaching warmth to a universe otherwise chilled by deadpan rigor. Del Toro’s Korda is a suitably inscrutable center, toggling between menace and farce. At the same time, Benedict Cumberbatch and Willem Dafoe—one wearing robes, the other a knowing smirk—help keep things entertaining even when the plot forgets to.

Threapleton, however, sticks out in all the wrong ways. While the rest of the ensemble hums along in Anderson’s peculiar key, she never quite finds the rhythm—making every line feel like a rehearsal rather than a performance.

Tonally, the film swings like a pendulum between slapstick and sermon. At times, the biblical allusions and post-mortem musings threaten to add depth—but Anderson, ever the aesthete, seems too polite to dig. "The film is full of symbolic gestures—planes crash, heavens beckon, and a golden age of interventionist arrogance is conjured—but it ultimately hesitates to explore their emotional fallout. The result is a philosophical soufflé that collapses under the weight of its decorum.

Set in the ancient land of Phoenicia, the film teases a narrative rooted in historical intrigue but rarely ventures beyond its surface.

Ironically, for a film titled The Phoenician Scheme, there is precious little scheming and even less Phoenicia. What we do get is a stylized smirk masquerading as satire—a boardroom farce staged on a dollhouse set. One leaves the cinema feeling like a guest at an elegant dinner party where the food was exquisite, the conversation charming, and yet—hours later—you can’t recall a single thing that was said.

Wes Anderson hasn’t lost his touch—he’s just too enamoured of it to notice the audience slipping away.