Wes Anderson’s new film makes an explosive offer

The Phoenician Scheme

2.5 stars (out of 4)

Starring Benicio Del Toro, Mia Threapleton, Michael Cera, Riz Ahmed, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch and Bill Murray. Written by Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola. Directed by Wes Anderson. 101 minutes. Opens June 6 in Toronto theatres. STC

Peter Howell

Movie Critic

“Help yourself to a hand grenade.”

Now there’s an offer you don’t get every day. In “The Phoenician Scheme,” the new Wes Anderson comedy, it’s heard multiple times. It’s as if the characters were at an anarchist’s picnic.

I can’t recall a previous film by the Texas auteur in which such a cordial invitation to mayhem was breezily extended. The movie looks different, too.

Anderson worked with French cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel (“Inside Llewyn Davis”) for the first time on a feature, since his longtime collaborator Robert Yeoman was unavailable. The result is a palette noticeably less colourful and vivid than usual, especially when compared with the riotous hues of “Asteroid City,” Anderson’s previous full-length release.

This mutes the film’s impact somewhat. Alexandre Desplat’s score, meanwhile, provides a transporting undercurrent, but can’t quite inject the film with the energy it seems to lack.

The aforementioned grenades, however, are a visual delight: plump, lemon-yellow orbs adorned with a tasteful green flourish, nestled together in a wooden fruit crate. Just what you’d expect from a Wes Anderson film, where style is everything.

Alas, the promise of citrus-scented carnage is never quite fulfilled. For all the pyrotechnic potential, the film generally rumbles rather than explodes, although it does begin with a loud kaboom.

It’s 1950, in an airplane high above the Balkan Flatlands. Embattled industrialist Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio Del Toro), a filthy rich baron of bulldozers and backroom deals, is enduring yet another attempt on his life. A bomb detonates aboard the plane, pulping a passenger, infuriating the pilot and obliging Korda to crash land the aircraft into a cornfield.

“Ha! I’m still in the habit of surviving!” he brags to the press.

The sad-eyed and cigar-chomping Korda is, however, getting tired of the daily grind of deal-making and death-defying, even as he announces plans for a giant canal and tunnel project in (mythical) Modern Greater Independent Phoenicia. It’ll be his biggest deal ever, but a little nudge from God Himself (Bill Murray) convinces Korda it’s time to examine his options and smell the lemons, so to speak.

Korda has 10 children, nine of them sons, yet he wants to turn over control of his estate to his estranged daughter, Liesl (Mia Threapleton, new to Anderson’s troupe), who isn’t exactly auditioning for a “Succession” remake. She’s about to make her final vows to become a nun, and she’s long considered her father’s “unholy mischief” to be too much, especially the rumour that he’s responsible for her mother’s untimely death. Still, she’s willing to listen, and even to forgive.

There you have the father-daughter dynamics that are the closest thing to a beating heart “The Phoenician Scheme” possesses. Much of the film concerns itself with explaining Korda’s daft business scheme in minute detail. Anderson and frequent co-writer Roman Coppola evidently assumed the audience would find it hilarious to see numbers and diagrams frequently arrayed across the screen in mind-blurring detail. An audience of accountants, maybe.

This infrastructure caper seems odd for Anderson. Del Toro is perfectly fine and so is Threapleton, but they lack the exuberance of Ralph Fiennes in “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” Anderson’s finest work, or the wicked smirk of the filmmaker’s longtime muse Murray.

There’s the usual gaggle of guest stars, among them Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Riz Ahmed, Scarlett Johansson, Jeffrey Wright, Rupert Friend, Hope Davis and Benedict Cumberbatch — all of whom obviously adore being in Wes Anderson movies.

The only one of this gang essential to this particular tale is Cumberbatch’s Uncle Nubar, Zsa-zsa’s brother, who may have an idea as to who killed Liesl’s mother, and why. A more serious version of this film would be considered a spy movie.

There is another noteworthy figure: Michael Cera, another Anderson newbie, who justifies his presence beyond adding a recognizable name to the crowded marquee. Cera plays Bjorn, a tutor and a wannabe suitor for Liesl.

Attempting to convince her of his worthiness as a potential husband, he tells her, “I’ve only been to one brothel. It left me cold.” Bjorn says this with a Scandinavian accent he might have learned from an Ikea commercial, but never mind.

Cera delivers the nutty yuks we used to expect of Anderson, back when his films were a novelty and not a factory issue.

The Canadian-born actor evidently impressed the maestro, because at a Cannes Film Festival press conference, Anderson promised to hire him again for a future film. They sealed the deal with a handshake. There was no grenade in either palm.

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