From the highly creative mind of Wes Anderson comes the story of a ruthless businessman and his estranged daughter. It is 1950. Anatole “Zsa-Zsa” Korda (Benicio del Toro) is an enigmatic industrialist and one of the richest men in Europe. He is also a global target for assassins. Now, he has barely survived yet another attempt on his life, an explosion that has blown open the back of the private plane he was in. Mind you, that was far from his first fiery encounter. It was, in fact, his sixth plane crash and this one didn’t happen before he literally ejected the pilot from the aircraft.
Korda is in the throes of completing a decades-long, career-defining project, known in short as the Phoenician Infrastructure Scheme. It involves exploiting a potentially rich, long dormant region, but with ongoing threats to him, he finally chooses to appoint and prepare a successor. The person in question is his 20-year-old daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton), who is about to become a nun and whom he last saw six years ago. Korda also has three former wives, the first of which was Liesl’s mother, who Liesl accuses Korda of murdering. Incidentally, Korda also has nine sons.
With a deeply suspicious Liesel on board, along with personal tutor Bjorn (Michael Cera), Korda takes to the air again. This time he is meeting with potential partners to try to get them to invest in his scheme, the financial gap on which is rapidly expanding. In short, he is bleeding money, but door after door closes on him.
The Phoenician Scheme is another wild and wacky ride from one of the most original filmmakers in the world. As the centrepiece of the film, Zsa-Zsa”, for the most part Benicio del Toro remains calm and measured (unflappable even). His deadpan manner suits the role perfectly. It is quite believable that Mia Threapleton, as the humourless Liesl, would have a crisis of faith and confidence in portraying his daughter.
Michael Cera plays quite an awkward and odd fellow, who shows more than a passing interest in Liesl, but there is more to Bjorn than at first meets the eye. As is Wes Anderson’s want, he also uses several big names in smaller roles. They include, but are not limited to, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Willem Dafoe, F. Murray Abraham, Byran Cranston and Rupert Friend. Benedict Cumberbatch is cast as Zsa-zsa’s mysterious half-brother Nubar.
Many of the one liners and sight gags are clever and funny, but I wasn’t as enamoured by the film as I wanted to be. I wanted to care more and get more excited by the plotting, but that wasn’t the case. In fact, unfortunately, I found The Phoenician Scheme a movie in which I could readily lose concentration, which I did a couple of times. It is not without artistic merit (Anderson remains a real ideas man), but give me The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) any day.
Score: 7 out of 10.
Alex First
Here are Jacqui Hammerton’s thoughts about the film:
Many fans of director Wes Anderson’s distinctive films will be overjoyed with another that delivers droll humour, quirky characters, a pastel palette and exquisite framing that echoes posed photography. Others, however, might wonder if The Phoenician Scheme is less uniquely creative and more same-old-Anderson. It is visually gorgeous, the dialogue is entertaining and a bizarre assortment of characters parade through …. Just as we have seen and heard before.
I wanted the plot to be more complex, the people better developed, less of the forced monotone and some emotional light and shade to add tension. In an A-list cast, Benedict Cumberbatch and Michael Cera are outstanding, while the talents of Tom Hanks and Brian Cranston in a basketball play-off are under-used. While I liked re-visiting Wes’s world, the sense of over-familiarity left me wanting more.
Score: 6.5 out of 10
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Alex First is the editor of The Blurb. Alex is a Melbourne based journalist and communications specialist. He also contributes to The Blurb on film and theatre.
