Phoenician Scheme. (Photo – TPS Productions/Focus Features)
Wes Anderson is a taste I thought I had finally acquired after seeing The Grand Budapest Hotel some years ago, maybe because the enclosed setting suited the director’s hothouse mentality. Unfortunately, after seeing his new film, The Phoenician Scheme, I’m back to the puzzled and disengaged reaction I’ve had to his other works.
Phoenician Scheme
Directed by Wes Anderson – 2025
Reviewed by Garrett Rowlan
In all likelihood, Anderson will remain a boutique filmmaker for me, with sets that look great but have the air of rooms in an enormous dollhouse, and a bright, varied color scheme whose radiance suggests Gatorade bottles glowing inside a convenience store refrigerator.
Anderson has a recurring cast of characters, and part of the fun, what there is of it, is spotting stars in cameo roles: Hope Davis still looking great in a nun’s habit, or Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston as co-investors in the eponymous scheme, which apparently aims to finance a hydroelectric dam and its supporting infrastructure.
Benicio Del Toro plays the lead, an apparent rapacious capitalist who is neither beguiling nor fascinatingly evil, or misunderstood, or complicated, but rather a blithe, charming guy in period suits (the film is set in 1950), though damaged by the various assassination attempts he endures.
It’s hard to connect with a plot whose soufflé-like nature is paired with line readings of an off-putting flatness, or, at times, a convoluted syntax that seems to come out of a word processor rather than life.
Maybe that’s why I found myself drifting off for a minute or two. I can usually power through a movie even if I’m beat, as long as it’s engaging, but at least my little afternoon naps made the film go by quicker and helped me dodge plot points I might’ve inadvertently spilled, as if that mattered.
> Regal Edwards Alhambra Renaissance, AMC The Americana at Brand 18, and AMC Burbank 16.
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