This entertaining Wes Anderson satire on imperialist scheming combines a slightly weak plot with clever characterisation but is mysterious in its intention and timing, finds Lucy Nichols

A billionaire launches a hair-brained scheme to harness the natural resources of an impoverished Levantine nation to bolster his already vast wealth. Enlisting the help of his wealthy friends and family, this is what arms-dealer Anatole ‘Zsa-Zsa’ Korda (Benicio Del Toro) sets out to do in Wes Anderson’s newest film, The Phoenician Scheme, set in the fictional ‘Modern Greater Independent Phoenicia.’

In many ways, the film is typically Wes Anderson. Aside from the signature cinematography, visual comedy and punchy one-liners, we have a wealthy, troubled patriarch with the primary goal of getting back, or staying, on top. The secondary goal of the Anderson patriarch is often to win the love of his misfit (often adopted) children, who he has, at some point, let down. This doesn’t always quite go to plan, but there is usually a cheerful ending where morality comes out on top. This is almost the case in The Phoenician Scheme.

Less typical of a Wes Anderson film is the open exploration of themes of Western imperialism and capitalist expansionism in the Middle East. Religion is also a key theme, where God (Bill Murray) mediates the worst of Zsa-Zsa Korda’s excesses.

The casting is clever and leans into archetypes. We have the star-studded ensemble cast with Anderson regulars Willem Defoe, Bill Murray, and Scarlet Johanson, as well as newcomers Michael Cera, and Richard Ayoade. Two American heroes of cinema, Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston, play Uncle Sam-types. All-American capitalists more than willing to make some money from a morally ambiguous Middle Eastern scheme. Michael Cera plays Bjorn Lund, a quiet Swedish man with a (deliberately) ridiculous accent. Riz Ahmed is (though not Arab) an Arabian Prince, modelled on the Hashemites or the House of Saud.

Scarlett Johanson is a German emigre setting up her own kibbutz, or ‘Private Utopian Outpost’ in the middle of the desert, though likely still on someone else’s land. Johanson is good in the film, but probably didn’t need to do very much research to play a Zionist, ‘cousin Hilda’ who for some reason has a German name but an Eastern European accent. Anderson’s decision to feature such an unsavoury character could easily leave a bitter taste in one’s mouth, but this is a film where almost every character is an antagonist, cousin Hilda included.

We also meet nightclub owner and expat Marseille Bob (Mathieu Amalric) in his club, where all the staff wear the North African fez, a clear nod to France’s unsavoury colonial exploits in North Africa. North Africa successfully colonised, Marseille Bob presumably now wants a piece of the Middle Eastern pie.

Richard Ayoade is a Communist guerilla in charge of his own militia, the Radical Freedom Militia Corps. Likely Anderson wouldn’t have gotten away with a fictionalised version of the PLO entering the film, so Ayoade sticks to his own British accent. Ayoade is a good guy in this film, the capitalists unmistakable bad guys. Initially a block to Zsa-Zsa’s evil scheming, he doesn’t really provide much opposition to capitalist expansionism, despite apparently being a diehard Marxist (he even quotes Marx at one point). Though Ayoade’s guerilla is a bad revolutionary, he does provide an extra layer of quirky comic relief to a film already full of whimsy and fun.

Benicio Del Toro is fantastic as Zsa-Zsa Korda, and Mia Threapleton plays his unimpressed daughter Liesl, a novice from a convent in Switzerland. Liesl (named after the character from the Sound of Music, surely) is Zsa-Zsa’s conscience, reminding him at times to choose the more moral option in his plan to take large sections of land from the people already living there: ‘don’t use slave labour’, for example. She brings the theme of religion and mortality into the film, which already has interludes in black and white, where Zsa-Zsa ostensibly sees himself on Judgement Day, before God at the gates of Heaven.

Eclectic entertainment

Though these characterisations are all somewhat subtle, Anderson’s intentions are clear: here is a Hashemite monarch, here is a Zionist, here is a French colonialist and here is an American capitalist. Here is the oligarch who wants to bring them all together. Now, watch what they try to do to the Middle East. It is no wonder the film’s strapline is, ‘If something gets in your way: flatten it!’

Anderson brings elements of comedy and mystery into what is essentially a spy-thriller or action film, at least by his standards. As Zsa-Zsa Korda sets out on his mission to conquer new lands and make more money, he must also survive several assassination attempts. These allow the film to bring in elements of murder-mystery (though without the murder). Also present is the counter-scheming by the authorities, Rupert Friend playing a CIA agent, determined to stop Zsa-Zsa from becoming too powerful.

The cinematography is fantastic. Exactly to be expected from Wes Anderson, who creates beautiful, magical films that are about as far away from the desaturated, dark action films Hollywood normally churns out. Mise-en-scene is also very well thought out. The masterpieces that litter Zsa-Zsa Korda’s palatial home are clever nods to his wealth and arrogance: pieces from the Renaissance to Cubist movement are left unkempt in dusty corridors.

This all makes for entertaining viewing in what could have been an even stronger film. Anderson is very clever in his handling of the subject, but something is missing when it comes to the plot. The film is somewhat formulaic; despite not necessarily ending where you think it might, it is reasonably easy to predict what is going to happen next once the film has started. The ending is also fairly open, creating a nice sense that the story isn’t quite over.

Perhaps the problem is that the ensemble cast is too much of an ensemble. There are too many elements in a film that is under the two-hour mark, it becomes almost repetitive in trying to fit in all these elements.

There is also the broader context. Why has the normally apolitical Wes Anderson decided to make a film about the carving up of the Middle East by the West? Is he taking aim at the billionaire class and the likes of Elon Musk, who seek to make money by any means necessary? Has the genocide in Gaza inspired him to reflect on the beginnings of the Israeli state? Or, does the history of the Levant merely make for an interesting case study upon which he can base his plot?

Whatever his motivation, The Phoenician Scheme is worth watching, especially if satirical films about Western imperialism in the Middle East with slightly weak plotlines are your thing. 

The Phoenician Scheme is now in cinemas.