Film Review: The Phoenician Scheme

The first frame of Wes Anderson’s newest creation opens in quintessential Anderson style: absurd, unsettling and beautiful. A mid-air assassination attempt leaves one unsuspecting passenger split in half, a pilot fired while still flying, and an unfazed industrialist, Zsa-Zsa Korda (Benicio Del Toro), with a bruised ego and exposed vestigial organ. 

Dedicated to Anderson’s late father-in-law, Lebanese construction engineer Fouad Malouf, the film draws on the Levant, particularly modern-day Lebanon and Syria, for its fictional location of “Modern Greater Independent Phoenicia”. Though never named outright, the geography, politics, and cultural undercurrents unmistakably refer to the Middle East. Arabic and Hebrew signage appear throughout, nodding to a region still reshaping itself in the aftermath of the 1948–49 Arab-Israeli War. However, despite the central protagonists being from Europe, the film avoids orientalist cliches and instead focuses on the West’s longstanding geopolitical interference in the region.

At the heart of the film is Korda, a tycoon with an unstoppable desire for profit. His latest venture is a vast railroad project alongside partners including Sacramento capitalists Leland (Tom Hanks) and Reagan (Bryan Cranston), and a charismatic heir to the fictional nation of Phoenicia, Prince Farouk (Riz Ahmed). Together, they seek to tunnel through the region, figuratively and literally, with a disregard to the land’s inhabitants, all in the name of progress and profit. 

But The Phoenician Scheme delves into more than just politics. It’s also a spiritual comedy, corporate drama, and a father-daughter exploration laced with biblical imagery and black humour. After he survives his sixth assassination attempt, Korda appoints his estranged daughter Liesl (played with an expert coolness by rising star Mia Threapleton), a pipe-smoking nun, as his successor. She becomes the moral compass of the story as she joins her father, and their eccentric lover of insects come financial advisor Bjorn (a brilliant Michael Cera), on a journey of cross-border power plays and philosophical dilemmas. 

The cast is expertly selected. Anderson regulars like Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe, and Scarlett Johansson (as the cousin Hilda) share the screen with newcomers like Richard Ayoade, who plays a Marxist militia leader named Sergio. Benedict Cumberbatch stars in a brief but brilliant role as the Uncle Nubar, an outrageous satire of dynastic entitlement.

Still, it's the leading characters Korda and Liesl who masterfully guide the plot. Korda is both monster and martyr, an avatar of late-stage capitalism haunted by visions of the afterlife. These black-and-white interludes, Judgement Day-style hallucinations in which God (played by Murray) questions the morality of Korda’s business empire and the worst of his excesses, inject the film with existential weight beneath its quirky, colourfully vibrant surface. Liesl, meanwhile, is his conscience, challenging his reliance on slave labour, famine economics, and the casual dehumanisation within his empire.

The cinematography is immaculate, of course. From the fez-wearing staff of a colonial-themed nightclub to the gaudy faux-Egyptian decor of a once-glorious hotel now run by European investors, the film's scenes are layered with irony and critique, and Anderson’s trademark stylistic aesthetic. 

Though technically set in the 1950s, the film feels distinctly modern. The Phoenician Scheme may be Anderson’s most openly political work. Its strapline says it all: “If something gets in your way: flatten it!” A blueprint for neo-colonial expansion.

Anderson’s decision to tackle such overtly political material - colonial legacies, nation-building, the establishment of settlements, and billionaire greed, feels timely, if slightly jarring. Is this a Gaza-inspired moral fable? A jab at Elon Musk-style techno-imperialism? Or a fusion of satire and storytelling, finished with Anderson’s signature aesthetic? Maybe it’s all three.

The Phoenician Scheme is a film about power and its limits, about whether decency can exist within systems built on cruelty, and about the absurdity of trying to lead a moral life in a world already sold off piece by piece. Beneath its quirky tone lies a bold exploration of spiritual ambiguity, political satire, and human vulnerability.