REVIEW. Despite a Cavalcade of Real-Life Masterpieces and a Parade of Stellar Cameos, THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME is More Contrived Style Than Intriguing Substance.

Benicio Del Toro (front left), Michael Cera (far back) and Mia Threapleton (front right)

Somewhere in the world c1950, multi-millionaire industrialist Anatole "Zsa-zsa" Korba (Benicio Del Toro) whose dubious background and personal resilience - he's cheated death and others many times - and whose professional profile strongly (ironically? diabolically?) resembles that of POTUS #47, emerges from a near-fatal plane crash bruised and battered, but nonetheless alive. It's the sixth time he's beaten the grim reaper after a plane debacle, and now he's determined to realize his long planned scheme to modernize the infrastructure of Phoenia.

Reconnecting with his only daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton), who may or may not be his biological offspring, and soliciting the assistance of a Norwegian tutor/entomologist named Bjørn (Michael Cera), who may or may not be of Scandinavian descent and may, in fact, be a spy, Zsa-zsa embarks on a journey to secure the financial backing of all his former business associates, some of whom may have tried to have him killed.

Set against Wes Anderson's standard backdrop of stylized, minimalist sets framed in vibrant Crayola colors like those found on 1950s postcards and greeting cards, clipped dialogue, deadpan delivery, robotic movements, and a stable of Hollywod royalty (including Tom Hanks, Benedict Cumberbatch, Willem Dafoe, Scarlett Johanssen, F. Murray Abraham, Bryan Cranston, Jeffrey Wright, and Anderson-perennial Bill Murray as - who else? - God), The Phoenician Scheme looks a lot better than it plays. Mostly, it lumbers along in search of a character or plot twist to pull the story together. Unfortunately, neither arrives by the time the credits roll.

Unlike earlier works Rushmore (1998), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014 - my personal favorite), and The French Dispatch (2021), Anderson's latest adventure never quite comes together as either a cohesive story or a droll black comedy. His typically comparmentalized approach to storytelling is strained here, leaving many unsatisfying gaps in the plot, the characters and their relationships.

What could have been an unconventional reckoning between Zsa-zsa and his estranged daughter turns into a gracless, gauche series of blundered conversations leading to a somewhat ham-fisted detente. What should have been a climatic confrontation between Zsa-zsa and his estranged brother "Uncle Nubar" (Cumberbatch), turns out instead to be a bit of a clumsy letdown with Nubar's eventual fate a kind of afterthought.

As a montage of artistic masterpieces, from Magritte to Renoir, floated across the screen during the end credits, I couldn't help but wish there had been more attention paid to story than scenery. Granted, The Phoenician Scheme is visually stunning at times, the opening credits invite us into Zsa- zsa's post-plane crash recuperation: an overhead camera chronicles the precise movements of nurses as they bring carefully crafted medical treatments, moving across the perfectly geometric tiled floor with the grace of ballerinas as Zsa-zsa feasts on a plate of picturesque eggs and polishes off his petit-déjeuner with a carefully selected glass of wine.

Later, when another near-death experience prompts Zsa-zsa to envision himself at the Pearly Gates, Anderson effortlessly switches to black and white, adding a stark, naked picture of heaven so quiet you can feel the texture of the clouds surrounding him. The opportunity to really utilize rubber-faced Bill Murray as God is, regrettably, lost here as Murray's lines and gestures are so short and fleeting it's hard to appreciate his presence.

Faring better in bit parts are Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston as Zsa-zsa's former business associates, and Riz Ahmed as Prince Farouk (heir to Phoenicia and a supporter of Zsa-zsa's plan). When Hanks and Cranston propose a game of hoops to settle their business differences, Ahmed is appalled as he has absolutely no idea how basketball is played - and it shows. Ahmed, known most recently for his Oscar-nominated performance in 2020's Sound of Metal looks uncharacteriscally dashing here and makes the most of his screen time, though like Murray, his character is underdeveloped and underused.

Nepo newcomer (her mother is actress Kate Winslet) Mia Threapleton as Zsa-zsa's oldest daughter Liesl (he also has nine sons), adopts the cadance of Anderson's quirky dialogue beautifully, though her character, a novitiate with an unusual understanding of secular deights, is never fully realized. Michael Cera, last seen as Ken's awkwardly shy sidekick Allan in 2023's Barbie, returns as another quintessentially lovable nerd and Liesl's love interest, Bjørn. Cera does his best with the material provided, trying to create a more complex character than Anderson's script allows.

Del Toro, now appearing in his second Anderson film (the first was The French Dispatch), doesn't have the same kind of odd appeal as other Anderson favorites like Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, Edward Norton or even Ralph Fiennes. Though Zsa-zsa is clearly intended to be a dark and swarthy European, I can think of a half-dozen other actors who might have been better suited for the role, including Fiennes, or Adrien Brody.

I could even envision Christoph Waltz in this role, as his ability to make otherwise unsavory characters palatable is remarkable. Antonio Banderas would have been infinitely more seductive, making Zsa-zsa's nefarious activities more appealing. And - go with me on this one - Timothée Chalamet, though probably too young to play Zsa-zsa at this point in his career, might have, with his recent moustached look, presented a uniquely clever, subversive and nuanced interpretation of Anderson's misguided industrial capitalist.

I've always liked Wes Anderson as a filmmaker and would still rather watch mediocre Wes than top-notch Marvel comics (with Black Panther and the first Iron Man possible exceptions), so I'd still recommend The Phoenician Scheme to fellow Anderson-philes. It's not as lyrical and wryly funny as The Grand Budapest Hotel, nor as as meticulously odd as The Royal Tenenbaums or as stylishly sentimental as The French Dispatch. Still, it will give you something to think/talk about after you see it, even if some of the reflection is frustrating in terms of how the movie might have been better, smoother, more impactful.

So far, reviews for The Phoenician Scheme have been mixed, with New Yorker's Richard Brody the most effusive about Anderson's latest film: "He looks back to a harder world of blood poetry and clangorous capitaism, extracting and distiling its virtues without notalgia and with shuddering reminders of its vices." Honestly, when is the last time you read the word "clangorous" in any context, let alone a film review?

I suspect Brody is more smitten with his own vocabulary than understanding Anderson's theme, and I would argue that, knowing Anderson's own cinematic heroes include Woody Allen, Pedro Almodovar and Roman Polanski (now there's an ecclectic group of role models), he's more likely to be using the 1950s to comment on the current political climate, especially the apparent nine lives the current US POTUS seems to possess, given his many real estate business "deaths" and political resurrections, à la Zsa-zsa's unconfirmed past.

Though Anderson's many film allusions (Zsa-zsa's culminating diorama of his "scheme" looks like it might have come straight from Jean Renoir's 1939 masterpiece, The Rules of the Game), and deliberate camera angles (shades of Orson Welles?) recall other stylishly effective filmmakers (was Anderson intentional with their inclusion here?), I found the resulting mishmash similar to my assessment of his last feature, 2023's Asteroid City: "I've never seen a Wes Anderson movie that didn't leave me with questions or stay in my head for days afterward. And that's okay. There's something refreshing and energizing about scratching your head a bit as you leave the theater."

The thing is, does Anderson give us any sense, any small crumb of redemption, that life is worthwhile, relationships are important, or that there is any greater purpose driving what we do?

You probably know the answer to that...again.

The Phoenician Scheme is now playing in movie theaters. It is rated "R for several violent scenes, though the more graphic violence is probably emotional.