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THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME

Producers: Wes Anderson, Steven Rales, Jeremy Dawson and John Peet   Director: Wes Anderson   Screenplay: Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola   Cast: Benicio Del Toro, Mia Threapleton, Michael Cera, Riz Ahmed, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Mathieu Amalric, Richard Ayoade, Jeffrey Wright, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Rupert Friend, Hope Davis, Bill Murray, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Willem Dafoe, F. Murray Abraham, Alex Jennings and Jason Watkins   Distributor: Focus Features

Grade: B+

Those familiar with Wes Anderson’s films will know what to expect from “The Phoenician Scheme”—a visually gorgeous but totally artificial aesthetic, lots of oddball characters and twee humor, and substantial representation of his ever-expanding repertory company, some of its members appearing fleetingly in brief cameos.  But in this case he adds a soupçon of genuine, if understated, emotion, something detractors claim is lacking in his elaborately designed cinematic confections.

The titular scheme has to do with the complicated plan of industrial mogul Zsa-Zsa Korda (Benicio Del Toro) to cap his career as “Mr. Five Percent” (a reference to the nickname given Armenian oil magnate Calouste Gulbenkian) by refashioning the infrastructure of the fictional country of Phoenicia using slave labor and money from a wacky assortment of rich investors.  His project is threatened, however, by a number of things.  One is that a consortium of tycoons headed by Excalibur (Rupert Friend) is fixated on derailing it by taking control of the world’s supply of the rivets it requires.  Another is that projected costs have escalated, requiring him to seek more funds from his investors.  And thirdly someone is trying to assassinate him.

That leads to a series of meetings with the investors after Korda survives the latest attempt to kill him by blowing up his private jet.  The first is with Prince Farouk (Riz Ahmed), who, in addition to thwarting another attempt to kill Korda, shows his support by agreeing to attempt a nearly impossible basketball shot to convince businessmen Leland (Tom Hanks) and Reagan (Bryan Cranston) to cover part of the funding gap.  The second takes us to the club of Marseille Bob (Mathieu Amalric), where an attack by a bunch of jungle rebels led by highly principled Sergio (Richard Ayoade) leads Korda to take a bullet meant for Bob, convincing him to contribute as well.  Then it’s on to loquacious shipping mogul Marty (Jeffrey Wright), who gives Korda a blood transfusion as well agreeing under pressure to cover part of the gap.  Fourth on the list is Hilda (Scarlett Johansson), a distant cousin who agrees to marry Korda but not to help with his financial difficulty.  That leaves Korda’s chances dependent on his final meeting—with his brother Nubar (Benedict Cumberbatch), an odious fellow Korda suspects of having killed Korda’s former wife.  Their reunion does not go at all well.

But while all of these episodes are leavened with deadpan humor and amusing running gags—like Korda’s habit of distributing hand grenades as gifts—together they constitute what’s little more than a gigantic MacGuffin.  We don’t really care about the intricacies of Korda’s industrial scheme, evidence of which resides in a collection of shoe boxes, or even about its proposed end result.  It just serves as the justification for those crazy meetings with his zany investors.  And they, in turn, constitute the engine driving the actual centerpiece of the film—Korda’s attempt to rebuild a relationship with his estranged daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton).                 

Liesl is a novice in a nunnery, whom Korda has decided to appoint as his heir on a probationary basis, setting aside his nine sons in the process (another amusing running gag involves the facility with a crossbow one of them has acquired).  He proposes the arrangement to her at a meeting where another character is introduced—Bjørn Lund (Michael Cera), an entomologist Korda’s hired as a tutor but abruptly appoints his secretary.  The three proceed through the adventures that follow together—all the investment meetings, assassination attempts and associated mishaps.  In the process Liesl’s rigidity slowly fades and Bjørn proves to be someone other than he seems even as their attitudes toward one another develop.  Korda, meanwhile, periodically has visions of a trial in some strangely archaic, apparently Balkan locale, where he faces unspecified charges and even takes a bet with God, played by a very unlikely guest star. 

The upshot of this peculiar journey is that Korda experiences a change of heart, altruistically deciding to go ahead with his project to benefit Phoenicia even though it means bankrupting himself.  But as a result his family life is much simplified and made more fulfilling.  Of course, Anderson eschews sentiment in portraying this happy denouement, ending on the note of wry understatement we’ve come to expect of him.

Del Toro gives Korda a bull-like determination that only occasionally slips into a more reflective mood, and Threapleton makes a winningly straitlaced companion for him.  Cera’s goofiness is utilized to the full in what amounts to a double role, while all the other members of the large ensemble seize on the oddities the script provides with ravenous relish; though it may be somewhat unfair to point to some over others, the ferocity of Cranston and Cumberbatch is especially noteworthy.

Of course the film is visually eye-popping, with the opulence and delicacy of Adam Stockhausen’s production design and Milena Canonero’s costumes captured in Bruno Delbonnel’s unerringly precise cinematography; Barney Pilling’s editing is scrupulously true to Anderson’s vision, and Alexander Desplat once again contributes a distinctively oddball musical background, which this time around uses Stravinsky as counterpoint.

“The Phoenician Scheme” may not equal Anderson’s very best work; it’s hard to match “The Grand Budapest Hotel.”  But in its visual artistry and narrative eccentricity, it proves a pretty delectable feast. 

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BALLERINA

Producers: Gavin Brivik and James Newberry   Director: Len Wiseman   Screenplay: Shay Hatten  Cast: Ana de Armas, Anjelica Huston, Gabriel Byrne, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Norman Reedus, Keanu Reeves, Ian McShane, Lance Reddick, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Victoria Comte, David Castañeda, Ava McCarthy, Abraham Popoola, Magdalena Sittova, Sooyoung Choi, Juliet Doherty, Marc Cram and Robert Maaser    Distributor: Lionsgate

Grade: C

These days it’s virtually axiomatic that any successful action movie will metastasize, and “John Wick” certainly has.  Since its debut in 2014 the movie has spawned three direct sequels, a comic book prequel series “The Book of Rules” and a spin-off streaming series, “The Continental.”  “Ballerina” is the first feature spin-off, equipped with the pre-title “From the World of John Wick,” presumably to assure devotees that they weren’t going to be exposed to some arty ballet film.  (As it turns out, “Swan Lake”—which seems the only ballet Hollywood moviemakers are aware of, apart from “The Nutcracker,” though the latter might be appropriate given the number of groin kicks the heroine applies to her male opponents—is the sole ballet alluded to here, and then only in brief snippets.)  It also includes appearances by some “Wick” veterans, including the man himself: it could, it fact, be the first in a multitude of installments focusing on other hit-people with whom he came in contact during his long career.

The protagonist in this case is Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas), who, as a child (Victoria Comte), witnessed her beloved father Javier (David Castañeda) killed by a squad of thugs led by a dark figure later revealed as The Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne).  Orphaned Eve is befriended by Winston Scott (Ian McShane), who takes her to the ballet school run by The Director (Anjelica Huston) of Wick’s Ruska Roma crime clan; and though Eve doesn’t excel at dance, she proves formidable in the school’s other curriculum in assassination, where Nogi (Sharon Duncan-Brewster) proves a most perceptive mentor in drumming into her that while she might not be able to go toe-to-toe with brutish men physically, there are other ways for young ladies to win.

And fight she must, first as a bodyguard to a young woman being threatened by a criminal gang.  But in performing her duties, the memory of her father’s death is triggered by a tattoo of an “X” on one of the villains she kills.  She learns that the tattoo signifies membership in The Chancellor’s cult, a group that kills for pleasure as much as cash, with which Ruska Roma has long maintained a modus vivendi.  Despite admonitions from The Director and Winston, Eve is determined to track down The Chancellor and take her revenge. 

The search takes her to a hotel in Prague that’s part of the Continental universe, where she breaks into the suite of Daniel Pine (Norman Reedus), who has a bounty on his head from The Chancellor not just for leaving the cult but taking his daughter Ella (Ava McCarthy)—The Chancellor’s granddaughter—with him.  When The Chancellor’s squad, led by a sinister, black-garbed woman named Lena (Catalina Sandino Moreno) invades the suite, Eve assists Pine against them, seeing Javier in Daniel and herself in Ella.  In the ensuing melee Pine is wounded and Ella abducted.

Eve has now gone rogue, and a bounty is put on her head.  But that doesn’t deter her from following the trail to Hallstatt, a snowy mountain town in Austria where all the inhabitants constitute a fighting force loyal to The Chancellor.  Eve must fight not only them, but a Ruska Roma heavyweight sent in to restore the uneasy truce with The Chancellor by liquidating her.

This second half of the film is just an endless series of battles against an apparently limitless array of enemies.  Except for the locale, however, it represents little change from the earlier part of the picture, which began with the protracted sequence of Javier fighting off The Chancellor’s men and continued through Eve’s initiation mission, the mayhem in Prague and an assault on a munitions shop run by a helpful guy named Frank (Abraham Popoola) where she stopped to pick up weaponry for her trip to Hallstatt.  The problem with these fight sequences is that while they’re all reasonably well choreographed by director Len Wiseman and his team and competently shot by cinematographer Romain Lacourbas, and possess some momentary bits of humor, they’re basically conventional from a visual perspective; apart from the initiation fight, set in a glitzy nightclub, they lack the psychedelically colorful pizzazz of the action sequences in the “Wick” movies.

The same observation applies to the virtually non-stop battles in Hallstaat. A couple of them show some flair—a confrontation with a variety of attackers in a café/souvenir shop and the capper, a duel with flame throwers and hoses against The Chancellor’s chief henchman Dex (Robert Maaser).  Both go on far too long, though, with editors Nicholas Lundgren and Jason Ballantine allowing them to drag on mercilessly, and even the mano-a-mano with the dude from Ruska Roma, though agreeably short, lacks any real distinction.  There’s also an “Empire Strikes Back” sort of revelation toward the close, but it amounts to a limp little blip.  The flamethrower episode probably holds a cinematic record, however, for the most people shown being incinerated; if only Smell-O-Vision were still around, the theatre could be filled with the odor of burning flesh for fifteen minutes or so.

Of course the action sequences in the “John Wick” movies were very long too, but those pictures were enlivened by Reeves’s characteristically zonked-out demeanor.  De Armas handles the physical demands of her role well (she and her stand-ins, that is), but she really doesn’t bring much to the party beyond a look of steely determination, and that gets rather tiresome over the course of two long hours.  The presence of familiar faces—Reeves, Huston, McShane and Reddick—can only do so much, and for the most part the new characters—Lena and Pine in particular—aren’t very interesting, and neither Sandino Moreno nor Reedus can do much with them.  But Popoola, as the put-upon weapons dealer, Magdalena Sittova, as a militant waitress in the Hallstaat café, and Marc Cram, as the exasperated manager of the Prague hotel, all offer welcome, if fleeting, moments of wry humor.  Byrne, on the other hand, can do little with the one-note part of the gloomy, vampiric Chancellor. 

“Ballerina” has been afforded a generally top-notch look.  Production designer Philip Ivey gives everything a niftily artificial appearance, especially in the Hallstatt section, and Lacourbas endows his work, and the costumes by Tina Kalivas, with a glossy glow.  One has to put up, however, with an exceptionally irritating synthesizer score by Tyler Bates and Joel J. Richard, which pounds on remorselessly throughout; it’s really a relief when a snatch of Tchaikovsky pops in occasionally.

Though bloated and unrelenting, “Ballerina” will undoubtedly do big business on the basis of the Wick connection, and probably spawn sequels of its own.  But apart from the change of protagonist it never manages to develop a profile of its own that would help it stand out from the previous pictures in the franchise, and in most respects it’s inferior to them.