4/5 stars
Wes Anderson’s latest feature, a spy movie rendered in the way only he can, feels like the antithesis to the latest Mission: Impossible film.
Playing in competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where his last two features premiered, The Phoenician Scheme is an old-fashioned espionage caper styled in the exquisite, delicately hewn manner for which Anderson is famed.
Here he gets to work with Benicio del Toro, who featured briefly in Anderson’s 2021 film The French Dispatch but here gets to take the lead. Perfectly cast, the actor plays Zsa-zsa Korda, a shady tycoon thought to be one of the richest men in Europe.
As the explosive aerial opening shows, there are people out to sabotage him, including a government-led task force (chaired by Rupert Friend).
With all this weighing on him, he decides to entrust his estate to his only daughter, Liesl (Mia Threapleton), a devout nun. She is suspicious of the offer, but feels she might be able to use his money for “good works”.