The Phoenician Scheme Review: Wes Anderson Returns with a Quirky and Quaint Tale of Industrial Espionage

The new film by the US director tells of a business robber baron and his daughter, a prospective nun: Why you could almost miss the real story in it.

The Phoenician Scheme Is Wes Anderson at His Most Muted

Wes Anderson, who specializes in designing fancifully invented societies, probably doesn’t strike anyone as an angry person. But his espionage comedy The Phoenician Scheme, playing in competition here at the Cannes Film Festival, shows glimmers of something that might be called anger, or at least frustration, over the greed and immorality of people who have too much—and yet only want more. The picture is flat and schematic—even flatter and more …

The Phoenician Scheme review: Wes Anderson returns with a quirky and quaint tale of industrial espionage

★★★★☆The Phoenician Scheme is in cinemas from Friday 23 May. Add it to your watchlistWes Anderson’s latest film starts with a bang. Quite literally. It’s 1950, and we find ourselves on a plane somewhere above the Balkan flatlands. There sits wealthy tycoon Zsa-Zsa Korda (Benicio Del Toro) when, all of a sudden, an explosion blows out a hole in the back of the plane, leaving one poor soul splatted. Just his legs and a gruesome splash of blood on …

‘The Phoenician Scheme’, which deals with the relationship of a 1950s tycoon and his daughter novice, coincides in the contest with the magnificent Brazilian film ‘O Secret Agent’

It was at the world premiere of The Phoenician Scheme, the new film by the director of The Tenenbaum eccentrics

The filmmaker climbed the steps with his XXL casting of "The Phoenician Scheme", but without Scarlett Johansson.