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James Mottram

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”.
So begins a mildly baffling journey, as Korda guides his daughter through the titular scheme he has been plotting for years – a slightly ill-explained venture involving a power station.
Joining them is Bjorn (Michael Cera), a tutor with a fey mid-European accent, as Korda and his daughter meet various relatives and associates.

Among them are Marseille Bob (Mathieu Amalric), a fez-wearing club owner à la Casablanca, sea captain Marty (Jeffrey Wright), the regal-looking Prince Farouk (Riz Ahmed) and the red-gingham-wearing Cousin Hilda (Scarlett Johansson).
With a plot that includes gun-toting Communist revolutionaries (led by Richard Ayoade), basketball-playing industrialists (Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston) and Benedict Cumberbatch with such stern eyebrows he looks like Leo Tolstoy, the film is as strange as it is inventive, never more so than in the ethereal black-and-white interludes with holy figures (Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg and long-time Anderson collaborator Bill Murray as God).
Wrapped inside this spy saga is a father-daughter story, as Liesl is left to figure out her parentage – especially her late mother, who just about everybody she meets seemed to know.

Threapleton, the daughter of actress Kate Winslet, is notably good throughout, while Anderson and co-writer Roman Coppola have fun with the trappings of the espionage genre. Cera even carries a tarantula in one scene; a nod to the first James Bond movie Dr. No, perhaps?
Best of all, Anderson’s regular production designer Adam Stockhausen’s work is exemplary. Take, for example, the overhead shot that the opening credits roll over, as Korda luxuriates in his bathroom. The attention to detail is immaculate.
Fans of Anderson’s peculiar brand of cinema will probably leave the cinema buzzing.
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Benicio Del Toro (left) as Zsa-Zsa Korda, Michael Cera as Bjorn and Mia Threapleton as Liesl in a still from The Phoenician Scheme, directed by Wes Anderson. Photo: TPS Productions/Focus Features

Michael Cera as Bjorn and Mia Threapleton as Liesl in a still from The Phoenician Scheme. Photo: TPS Productions/Focus Features

Mia Threapleton as Liesl and Benicio Del Toro as Zsa-Zsa Korda in a still from The Phoenician Scheme. Photo: TPS Productions/Focus Features

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Director brings his style and a star-studded cast including Bill Murray as God to a mildly baffling spy tale and father-daughter story


Director brings his style and a star-studded cast including Bill Murray as God to a mildly baffling spy tale and father-daughter story.


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Review | Cannes 2025: The Phoenician Scheme movie review – Wes Anderson’s exquisite espionage caper

Director brings his style and a star-studded cast including Bill Murray as God to a mildly baffling spy tale and father-daughter story