Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
Wealthy businessman Zsa-zsa Korda appoints his only daughter, a nun, as sole heir to his estate. As Korda embarks on a new enterprise, they soon become the target of scheming tycoons, foreign terrorists, and determined assassins.
Wes Anderson's The Phoenician Scheme delivers his trademark immaculate visual design and symmetrical framing at a high level, with meticulous production design and cinematography that is unmistakably his own. The premise — a roguish arms-dealing industrialist recruiting his estranged nun daughter as heir amid assassination attempts — is lively and thematically rich (redemption, legacy, mortality). However, by 2025 the Anderson formula feels more familiar than fresh, keeping Novelty from soaring. The ensemble acting is competent and stylized in the expected Andersonian deadpan register, though no single performance breaks through memorably. The plot has energy in its middle sections but struggles with payoff, and the ending reportedly lands with less satisfaction than the setup promises, feeling abrupt or undercooked relative to the film's ambitions.