First Take: The Phoenician Scheme - family business, Wes Anderson style

SYNOPSIS: Wealthy businessman Zsa-zsa Korda appoints his only daughter, a nun, as sole heir to his estate. As Korda embarks on a new enterprise, they soon become the target of scheming tycoons, foreign terrorists and determined assassins.

My word Wes Anderson is cracking out these films quickly nowadays, squished between Asteroid City and the fantastic Roald Dahl shorts he made for Netflix, somehow he’s found time to sneak in yet another feature film! But again, like with Asteroid City, there’s a few issues to be had with the general feel of this one, a film that had it not been for the strikes and the associated production delays, would’ve been with us last summer.

Obviously directing to his own script (and a story devised with Roman Coppola), the dialogue is very Wes coded, so if you’ve seen his older films you know what you’re letting yourself in for… but on a structural level, 1 hour 41 minutes though. Packing a fair amount into such a short runtime, while it is nice to see it come in under 2 hours, it just doesn’t feel tight enough. It’s a slow burner, a decent slow burner, but one that needs you to be paying attention. Stepping in for longtime DOP Robert Yeoman, who’s off making other films at the minute, is Bruno Delbonnel, who does a fine job keeping those stylistic conventions in tact with elements that will come alive on a laser projection screen, and as usual Alexandre Desplat comes in with music as and when it’s needed.

Onto the cast, and there is a lot of heavyweight quality as ever - Benicio del Toro leads another stacked group of talent, including longtime collaborators Bryan Cranston, Scarlett Johannson, F. Murray Abraham, Jeff Goldblum, and Mathieu Almaric with a side helping of Benedict Cumberbatch, Richard Ayoade (playing a character that goes against everything we’ve ever seen him perform, for a change), Tom Hanks, Michael Cera, Riz Ahmed and so many more. But the standout is Mia Threapleton - understandably she has one of the best actresses in the world as her mum (she’s Kate Winslet’s eldest daughter), and on her first major Hollywood role she is rather good. Guess you can say it’s in her genes. Ultimately this film is style over substance, and knowing one mate of mine had this as their ‘introduction’ to the world of Wes Anderson… oh that group chat will light up once this review goes out.

THE VERDICT

It’s not the greatest Wes Anderson film, but it’s not the worst one either - The Phoenician Scheme is a perfectly fine addition to a fine body of work but ultimately somebody somewhere needs to start reining him in, or going back to more limited releases, cause this is arthouse stuff that somehow gets into multiplex cinemas.

RATING: 3/5