The meticulously crafted dollhouse world of director Wes Anderson expands even further with "The Phoenician Scheme," an externally wily yet internally melancholy comedy about international espionage, family, legacy and perfectly framed diorama-like imagery.

Benicio del Toro, reteaming with Anderson after 2021's "The French Dispatch," plays Anatole "Zsa-Zsa" Korda, a big-time international arms dealer who loves nothing more than making deals. It's unavoidable that this arrogant business tycoon draws parallels to a certain commander in chief, but that could be symptomatic of our times, and he does not seem to be a stand-in for Trump in any overt sense.

When he's not dodging constant assassination attempts, which are handled not with threat or menace but with Anderson's particular brand of adroit whimsy, Korda wants to make things right with his estranged daughter, Sister Liesl (Mia Threapleton), a nun whom he invites back into his life after years apart. He wants to make her his heir and leave her his empire, and while she's skeptical of his plans and character, she decides to see the good in his intent and give him the benefit of the doubt.

Korda's overarching scheme involves a lot of deals and deals within those deals that manifest themselves in tiny, contained set pieces, one involving a pair of brothers (played by Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston) and a game of H-O-R-S-E that throws back to the days of old-timey hoops. (Sure, the movie is set in 1950, but you also get the picture that Anderson's preferred style of filmed basketball is more "Hoosiers" than modern NBA.) There are also several scenes set in the afterlife, with a council of elders made up of some of our greatest actors (Willem Dafoe and F. Murray Abraham among them), and featuring Bill Murray as God himself, which squares neatly with Anderson's worldview.

The busy script (by Anderson, from a story by Anderson and frequent collaborator Roman Coppola) zigs and zags and can be, frankly, difficult to wrangle. (At various points, characters played by Jeffrey Wright, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Riz Ahmed and Mathieu Amalric also figure into the story.) But the overall theme is redemption, and that gives "The Phoenician Scheme" a warm center amid all its orbiting zaniness.

Del Toro is a natural as Korda, quiet and mournful underneath his character's arrogant bluster, and not only is Threapleton a discovery — can a person count as a discovery if she's Kate Winslet's daughter? Alas, probably not — but she makes Sister Liesl and her all-white nun's habit the most ready-made Anderson-universe female Halloween costume since Margot Tenenbaum and her iconic Lacoste dress.

It should also be mentioned that "The Phoenician Scheme" marks Anderson's first collaboration with Michael Cera, who plays Bjørn Lund, a Norwegian insect enthusiast tagging along with Korda. The actor, who would probably be the first choice to play Anderson in a biopic about the filmmaker, fits so perfectly into the director's world that it's baffling it took this long for the pair to finally collaborate. (Without looking it up, you'd probably think Cera was an Anderson regular and they'd worked together six times already.)

Anderson's visuals, from his set and costume designs to his color palettes, will always be on-point; the question is whether his stories will have the heart to matter beyond their own preciousness. "The Phoenician Scheme" hits home and carves out a space for itself in the upper half of Anderson's filmography, with a strong potential to rise over time. It not only has a sharp eye but a deep soul.

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'THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME'

Grade: B+

MPA rating: PG-13 (for violent content, bloody images, some sexual material, nude images, and smoking throughout)

Running time: 1:45

How to watch: Now in theaters

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