The stranger-than-fiction disappearance of D.B. Cooper might remain an unsolved mystery, but that hasn’t stopped filmmakers from taking a crack at the case, or at least invoking the tale. Jumping from an airborne plane, briefcase stuffed with some 200,000 dollars cash in hand, never to be seen again will afford you some mental real estate in the minds of the masses, and our celluloid storytellers are no different. Appearing in broad comedies like Cocaine Bear and Without a Paddle as well as the televised sagas of Loki and Prison Break, the references lack any type of thematic cohesion across their vast deployment, though The Phoencian Scheme’s shout out might be the new standard bearer when measured in terms of contradiction. We might all dream of disappearing in a blaze of persistent, confounding glory, but Wes Anderson has taken it upon himself to stay put. Escape hatches are for those with a weak constitution; Wes serves his mild-mannered perfectionism with an extra side of gumption.

Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio Del Toro) might share in his creator’s resilience and international interests, but his Cooper impression, witnessed in the surprisingly tense introductory frames of Phoenician, shows the apple falling far from the tree. Elusive by nature, the shady industrialist makes a lavish living out of cutting clandestine deals and running from consequences, be they punitive or parental. Despite having nine male offspring in his immediate orbit to choose from, he calls on his estranged daughter, the aspiring nun Liesl (Mia Threapleton), when his latest narrow escape prompts the search for a successor. Her immediate trepidation will have to co-exist with some on-the-fly job training, because the wheels for the titular plot, involving an infrastructural overhaul in the Mediterranean, have already begun spinning.

The plan, as it’s conveyed to the audience, is both overly convoluted and largely implausible, but tariffs and tax rates aren’t the kind of minutiae you’re supposed to be paying attention to anyway. As is the case with any Anderson picture, the details worth cherishing are more cosmetic in nature, comprised of immaculate wardrobing, deft and particular set decor, and some mise en scène showboating. You wouldn’t mistake it for any other director on the planet, though things are scaled back a bit from the optical onslaught of his last few features, a modesty that extends to the film’s comparatively straight-forward narrative. The adventure that Korda and Liesl embark on is still episodic, though there’s none of the nesting doll structure that’s defined his live-action output since The Grand Budapest Hotel. It can be difficult to hold all the numbers and mechanics in your hands while your eyeballs are so restlessly stimulated, but their haziness is softened by legible forward momentum.

Speaking of moving from left to right, Wes’ signature pan shot is largely mothballed, making space for the most vertically-inclined film of the auteur’s career. Cinematographer Robert Yeoman, whom Anderson had worked with exclusively on his non-animated fare since 1996’s Bottle Rocket, is replaced by Bruno Delbonnel, who brought his boxy 1.5:1 aspect ratio along for the trip. Players seem mountainous within his frame, and while some of the patented background chaos is lost in the transition, affixing the movie with its looming, enveloping qualities is a worthy trade-off. The opening credit sequence, which features a calvary of staffers attending to Korda’s wounds as he soaks in a milkbath, is mesmeric proof of concept, turning a routine set of procedures into a fleet-footed ballet that leaves Gwyneth Paltrow’s The Royal Tenenbaums entrance in the dust. 

Looking for deviation within Anderson’s aesthetic ecosystem can sometimes feel like a fool’s gambit, but the lensing here is just the tip of the iceberg. Composer Alexandre Desplat is no stranger to the stringent apparatus, though his trademark gentle whimsy is replaced by a threatening thrum, booming out of multiplex speakers like a Kid’s Bop version of the There Will Be Blood score. All that sonic bombast can only portend violence, and Phoencian breaks from the rest of Wes’ filmography by heeding the call, with myriad scenes of gunfire and exploding appendages littered throughout the proceedings. They’re stylized, and often played for laughs, but the tossed-off nastiness feels new, as does the moral bankruptcy of our protagonist. Bad dads may be peppered liberally across Anderson’s resume, but none of them have casually employed slave labor in the past. Korda’s dastardly set-up makes the old feel new again, but Leisl is the embodiment of safe harbor.

Anderson kills parents like Christopher Nolan murders wives, which makes Threapleton’s motherless sympathy magnet all the more impressive for standing out amongst so many esteemable comparison points. Operating as both the audience avatar and moral compass at the center of Korda’s free-wheeling ponzi scheme, her steely grace and precise line readings are heightened by Delbonnel’s loving photography, which situates the habit-wearing Leisl as a modern day answer to Maria Falconetti in The Passion of Joan of Arc. Mimicking a century-old classic of world cinema shouldn’t look this easy, but the daughter of Kate Winslet possesses her mother’s overpowering gravitational pull, and if we’re still in the business of minting movie stars, Threapleton’s job application will be hard to ignore. Del Toro is as steady and captivating as we’ve come to expect, but he’s no match for his co-star’s saintly visage.

Neither is Michael Cera, and while it’s always fun to see a new contributor in Wes’ ever-expanding repertoire theater troupe, tasking him with the trickiest role in the film comes with predictable detriments. Hemmed in by a cartoonish Norwegian accent, the Arrested Development alum settles into the part after a mid-movie turn affords him a little breathing room, but by then the damage is done. It’s hard to think of a more egregious example of miscasting in Anderson’s entire catalogue, even if that denouncement has far more to do with the director’s sterling track record than Cera’s minimal range as a thespian. His beta-male aloofness adds an unwelcome metatextual layer that’s compounded by the deluge of famous actors in bit parts. No one who enjoys fun can rightly balk at seeing Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston don Ivy League pullovers for a one-scene cameo, but the onslaught is pervasive and distracting. You start looking askance at everyone who walks into a room, trying to clock what prestige TV show you might have seen them in before, pertinent information bouncing off of the viewer like a basketball on hardwood.  

Or concrete, as seen mid-movie in a subterranean game of HORSE, one of the flick’s many flights of comedic fancy that come up just short. Anyone with an affinity for Anderson knows that some twee eccentricity is part of the package, but the jokes here fall flat more often than not, an acceptable trade-off in the face of increasingly dire subject matter. The air has been leaking out of the balloon for a while now in this regard, unable to stand up against Jeffery Wright’s comely recollections in The French Dispatch, or Margot Robbie’s heartbreaking cameo at the end of Asteroid City. Wes is getting older, like the rest of us, and would probably be wise to put sequences like the zany jungle melee here to rest. None are terrible, but his palette seems increasingly better suited to things like Phoenician’s stunning, blank-and-white visits to the afterlife. 

They’re gorgeous and haunting, and as many cries as there are for the helmer to switch things up, both tonally and visually, Anderson’s peaks still dwarf all challengers. The Phoenician Scheme represents something of a valley, given its lowered visual and narrative ambitions, but that’s all relative. Even his lesser offerings have more fussed-over nuance, technical aplomb, and emotional rigor than just about anything else around, and his refusal to listen to the naysayers is a gift to us all. He’s no D.B. Cooper, and the calls for him to change, to disappear and then reemerge like a phoenix from the ashes, mistake consistency for redundancy. The feature-to-feature adjustments may be slight, but the overture is astounding, woven together by a dogmatic creator who remains steadfast and present. His latest is mostly more of the same, and we’re lucky to have it.