‘The Phoenician Scheme’ Blu-ray (review)

Sony Pictures

Over the course of several decades, Wes Anderson has built a body of work with a style so distinct, it can almost be considered a genre in its own right.

With The Phoenician Scheme, the filmmaker returns with yet another bout of purposefully stilted dialogue uttered with deadpan delivery by a who’s who of eclectic A-listers appearing in aesthetically appealing visuals of obsessively decorated sets with not a single element of any given frame left to chance.

Here, we follow Benicio del Toro’s Zsa-zsa Korda, an unscrupulous businessman who has continued to expand his empire in spite of a multitude of assassination attempts, however, after a near-death experience, he decides he must appoint his only daughter, a nun-in-training by the name of Liesl (Mia Threapleton), to be his successor, and the estranged pair embark on his latest venture, which sees them encounter a cavalcade of calamities along the way.

Visually, Anderson’s trademark style is utilized to its full extent, resulting in The Phoenician Scheme being yet another of his borderline cartoonish presentations, which impresses with its aesthetic meticulousness, albeit it does come across as less layered and purposeful compared to Anderson classics such as The Grand Budapest Hotel.

The performances offer the oddball intensity synonymous with Anderson’s directing style, with Michael Cera standing out as being particularly pitch perfect, but then this is hardly surprising, as Cera’s filmography does make you question why it took Anderson until his thirteenth effort to feature an actor whose presence and performance style has always seemed as if it may, in fact, be comprised entirely of distilled Anderson-isms.

While The Phoenician Scheme oozes of Anderson’s trademark aesthetics, compared to his other efforts, it does not manage to engage as much as other offerings have in the past, feeling at once like a return to form as well as a barely lucid retread of all too familiar filmmaking tropes associated with Anderson.

This extends to the pacing as well, which purposefully meanders from one vignette to another, however, it continuously veers uncomfortably close to being mindless meandering instead, as the film feels almost too hyper-stylized – even by Anderson’s standards – and cold, leaving it lacking as a piece of storytelling in spite of a plethora of plot twists and narrative novelties.

As such, your mileage will most certainly vary depending on how you already feel about Anderson’s filmmaking style, ensuring that fans will likely find The Phoenician Scheme to be a comforting bit of black comedy like only Anderson can present it, yet at the same hardly winning over those who have long since written the filmmaker off as a pretentious flimflam merchant.

All in all, The Phoenician Scheme is a visual feast with an abundance of the type of quirky jokes and gags practically synonymous with Anderson, and while it is certainly among the more interesting releases of 2025 as a whole purely on the basis of the satisfying visuals it has to offer, it nonetheless feels a tad too formulaic by Anderson’s standards, resulting in a visually competent effort lacking in narrative flair.

Extras include featurettes.

Verdict: 7 out of 10.