The Phoenician Scheme (2025)
Genre: Comedy
Duration: 101 minuten
Country:
United States / Germany
Directed by: Wes Anderson
Stars: Benicio Del Toro, Mia Threapleton and Michael Cera
IMDb score:
6,6 (65.291)
Releasedate: 23 May 2025
The Phoenician Scheme plot
"If something gets in your way: flatten it."
Magnate Anatole "Zsa-Zsa" Korda is one of the richest men on the European continent. With his daughter Liesl, who found her calling as a nun, they take lessons from a certain Bjorn Lund. The family runs a family business together and ends up in the world of espionage. The members are confronted with betrayal and face choices that lie in a morally gray area.
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Actors and actresses
Zsa-zsa Korda
Sister Liesl
Bjorn Lund
Prince Farouk
Leland
Reagan
Marseille Bob
Sergio
Marty
Cousin Hilda
Reviews & comments
mrklm
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- 11629 messages
- 10041 votes
Anderson finds his form again, literally and figuratively, in this entertaining, surreal black comedy about hustler, businessman and aviation pioneer Zsa-zsa Korda [Benicio Del Toro] who, after surviving his sixth plane crash, names his daughter Liesl [Mia Threapleton], who has lived in a convent since she was five, as his heir. He takes her on a journey to visit the financiers of a megalomaniac infrastructure project in the desert country of Phoenicia in order to (more or less) renegotiate. Joining them is Bjorn [Michael Cera], originally hired as a tutor to Zsa-zsa's nine sons and now acting as his personal secretary. An Arab prince [Riz Ahmed], two American businessmen [Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston], Marseille Bob [Mathieu Amalric], the head of a syndicate [Jeffrey Wright], Zsa-Zsa's cousin Hilda [Scarlett Johansson] and "Uncle" Nubal [Benedict Cumberbatch] can expect a visit. The CIA continues to try to sabotage things with the help of a spy and someone else carries out several attacks, in which Zsa-Zsa repeatedly comes face to face with a kind of afterlife where Willem Dafoe and Bill Murray, among others, may make an appearance. In contrast to the sedate and artificial Asteroid City, Anderson's visual style here always serves the story and the actors are given plenty of space to give color to their characters. The screenplay by Anderson and Roman Coppola is full of dryly comic moments and details that invite you to watch it several times. Richard Ayoade is hilarious as a more theatrical than effective revolutionary. Anderson's best film since The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Translated from Dutch · View original
mjk87 (moderator films)
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- 14602 messages
- 4555 votes
Around 2012 I saw Moonrise Kingdom, a great film (still) and my first Wes Anderson. And soon after The Grand Budapest Hotel came, still very nice and good. So I thought I was a fan of him but actually everything that came after or that came out earlier disappointed me. From very mediocre to so-so. But never more than that. So now I doubt whether I am such a fan of Anderson,
Well, from shot 1 you already know that this is a film by Wes Anderson. And visually again very nice in his typical style; there is enough to see. Only the story is not much, the film is never fun and the actors act so coolly that I never really got into the film. Now that is usually not the intention with Anderson, if only that you see that everything is happening in a set setting, but still, a little more experience would be nice. The actors are visibly enjoying themselves, that is true, but that enjoyment never really comes across to me as a viewer. 1.5*.
Translated from Dutch · View original
De filosoof
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- 2489 messages
- 1700 votes
The film of course has the typical Wes Anderson style which is a kind of mixture of obsessive-compulsive disorder and ADHD which enhances the light absurdity of the farce. The obsessive-compulsive disorder gives the over-organized visual style with symmetrical structures and compositions measured in terms of colors but also a list that has to be completed so that you don't have to look at your watch to know how far we are in the story. The ADHD enhances the 'wit' of the style: the pace is high where you don't have time to think about things or even to take everything in because the talking continues constantly while visually all kinds of things are happening. The film is so over-organized and over-crowded but the film loads the suspicion upon itself - that applies to almost every Anderson film but this one even more than others - that it mainly has to distract the viewer because there is little content. Because what is the film about? About a cold arms dealer who refuses to die in the legion of attacks on him, who is undermined in business by politics while his daughter and brother thwart him in their own way and who in this apparent final phase of his life hallucinates about how he has to justify his life to Peter at the gates of heaven. That's all it is: there seems to be no depth (or you have to associate the 'gap' with Trump's trade war) and as a farce it is at most mildly funny. But the rich visual style makes up for some of it.
Translated from Dutch · View original
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