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The Phoenician Scheme movie review: Eccentric densely populated stylish comedy

Updated on: 20 June,2025 03:28 PM IST  |  Mumbai
Johnson Thomas | mailbag@mid-day.com

Among writer/director Wes Anderson’s goofiest movies, ‘The Phoenician Scheme’ has a lot of physical humor and the sight gags, though as weird as they come, make for deeper content

The Phoenician Scheme movie review: Eccentric densely populated stylish comedy

Still from The Phoenician Scheme

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Film: The Phoenician Scheme
Cast: Benicio del Toro, Mia Threapleton, Michael Cera, Riz Ahmed, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Mathieu Amalric, Richard Ayoade
Writer/Director: Wes Anderson
Rating: 3/5
Runtime: 102 min.

Among writer/director Wes Anderson’s goofiest movies, ‘The Phoenician Scheme’ has a lot of physical humor and the sight gags, though as weird as they come, make for deeper content. It’s about an oligarch manipulating his family and others in business.  


The film opens with Benicio del Toro playing a businessman named Zsa-zsa Korda, surviving his sixth plane crash. Before the plane crashes a man is blown to smithereens and after the crash a deadpan, not too seriously injured Korda ruthlessly fires the pilot just as he lands after ejecting from the crashing plane. Someone has been trying to kill Korda for a while now, and he decides that before too long, he needs to protect his empire by naming an heir. He has nine sons, some of them adopted, but Korda has made his mind up to prepare his daughter, a nun named Liesl (Mia Threapleton), to take over.


The confrontation with mortality pushes the atheist billionaire to re-evaluate his priorities. That brush with death that propels him to deal honestly for the first time. But it's hard for someone who is so used to getting his own way by hook or by crook.

The unscrupulous schemer sets out to teach a reluctant Liesl the ropes as he negotiates a massive deal, going on a globetrotting mission to secure funding from an odd assortment of multiple sources including a prince, Farouk (Riz Ahmed), brothers (played by Tom Hanks & Bryan Cranston), a nightclub owner Marseille Bob (Mathieu Amalric), an American, Marty (Jeffrey Wright), his cousin Hilda (Scarlett Johansson) and Uncle Nubar (Benedict Cumberbatch).

As Zsa-zsa and Liesl go around in their private jet, a radical, Sergio (Richard Ayode) trails them. Everywhere he goes, the tycoon remains indomitable despite numerous assassination attempts.

Adam Stockhausen in production design and Milena Canonero in costuming, construct Zsa-zsa’s materialistic world with elan.

Michael Cera as an awkward tutor with a secret, Del Toro, Threapleton and the all-stars cast which also includes the likes of Richard Ayoade, Rupert Friend, Hope Davis, Willem Dafoe, and Bill Murray, are excellent.

“The Phoenician Scheme” is pretty light-weight in terms of theme and is dense in plotting. There are so many characters that it’s hard to get involved in what they are doing. There’s a bit of a mystery regarding what Wes Anderson was trying to convey with this film. The backstory is truncated and what you see is so weird and eccentric that you just don’t care. The series of negotiations between Korda and the eccentric characters he meets, in the wake of murderous attempts on his life and a haunting mystery behind his wife, Liesel’s mother’s death, feel off track. The plotting feels arbitrary. Anderson and co-writer Roman Coppola seem to be making things up as they go along.

This densely populated, tongue-in-cheek look at the games titan’s are wont to play, also tries hard to be a moving father-daughter tale but the latter is never achieved. In the end you feel for the spectacular ensemble that gives off their best in a film that doesn’t really go anywhere.

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