‘The Phoenician Scheme’: Ambitious as a Korda plan, as misfiring as a Korda assassination plan
Film review
Dispatch from Cambridge: The quirky, witty twee of Wes Anderson may be running dry. Sad but so. The genre-bending director scored early and often with such notable art house hits as his take on Salinger’s Glass family, “The Royal Tenenbaums” (2001), his toe dip into animation, “The Fabulous Mr. Fox” (2009) and my favorite, “Moonrise Kingdom” (2012). The list goes on. Anderson was pretty much a sure thing, but his most recent three films – “The French Dispatch” (2021), “Asteroid City” (2023) and this ambitious misfire – have been sputters of what was and what might have been and, worse, smug delves into cinematic overindulgence.
As in “Asteroid City,” the setting is the 1950s. Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio Del Toro), a shady international tycoon, is trying to get an underground rail line built so he can harvest some sort of valuable commodity or resource (ore, oil, rubber, fill in whatever you’d like). To get his scheme to fly, he must strike a deal with a multitude of interests that range from Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston as basketball-loving brothers who control the rails to a hardscrabble American businessman (Jeffrey Wright) who holds water rights, a European club owner and financier (Mathieu Amalric) and a desert kingdom prince named Farouk (Riz Ahmed). In a far smaller part, Scarlett Johansson checks in as Korda’s Cousin Hilda, whom he may or may not have to have a short, tactical Jerry Lee Lewis union with.
The ongoing joke in the film is that Korda is near invincible. He’s survived six grisly plane crashes and due to thwarted, angry rivals and the swindled looking for revenge, there’s an assassination attempt on Korda about once every five minutes, including the opener when a bomb rips a hole in his plane and severs one of his lackeys in half. It’s supposed to be bloody funny, but it’s not. That’s a good point of pause. This has to be the most violent Wes Anderson movie ever and – unbelievably – might even out-savage “From the World of John Wick: Ballerina,” which also opens this weekend, and “Bring Her Back,” which opened last week.
The other main plot driver is Korda reuniting with his 21-year-old daughter Liesl (Kate Winslet’s daughter, Mia Threapleton), who has spent her years in a nunnery and goes through most of the film swaddled in virginal white. The logistics are a bit sketchy, but Korda wants her in on his plan so she can take over the biz and manage his affairs should he actually ever succumb to hit, crash or old age – all this when he has sons running around his complex, firing crossbow bolts randomly. Amid all his near-death experiences, Korda has a heartbeat timeout and goes to heaven, or something like it, where a giant, hirsute Bill Murray plays god and Willem Dafoe is lurking about and leering.
The most inspired casting is Michael Cera as Bjorn, a mild-mannered tutor to Korda’s boys, who joins Korda and Liesl on their globe-trotting mission. Cera’s Hans-and-Franz accent nearly saves the film. Most audacious, however, is Benedict Cumberbatch looking like Rasputin on angel dust as Uncle Nubar, who might have had an affair with Liesl’s mother (Korda’s wife) and could have had a hand in her murder.
Visually the film is spare and stunning. It has the same opulent pastel sheen as “Asteroid City,” though shot by different cinematographer, Bruno Delbonnel (“Amélie”), yet the characters are flat and forgettable – surprising given such thespian talent at hand. It’s maddening too, as the plot bounces around so much you don’t feel like you’re fully with Wes. It makes you wonder: Am I not quick enough to keep up, or has Wes just wandered off?