Although The Palermo Shooting was never released in the United States (save a Berlin & Beyond Festival screening), the film received a limited European theatrical and DVD release as well as premiered at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. Though reviews on the film are few to be found, critics have been almost universally negative towards the film, finding its premise nonsensical, pretentious and pointless. Unsurprisingly, Milla Jovovich’s cameo appearance hasn’t been assessed in any reviews.

• Rating > Internet Movie Database: 5.7/10 (600 user votes counted)

Extracts from professional reviews:

“Twenty-eight pop songs go looking for a drama to accompany them in Palermo Shooting, which suffers from being both pretentious and inconsequential. Wim Wenders’ first European-set narrative feature in 14 years stars German pop singer Campino as a trendy photographer who enters into a periodic conversation with Death (Dennis Hopper in a hood) as he journeys from Dusseldorf to the titular Sicilian city. Though nicely shot and bedecked with almost continuous tunes by name bands the protag is listening to on earphones, pic is dominated by a touristic perspective in the second half and won’t find the critical favor that has eluded Wenders for some time now. Commercial prospects are slim.” – Todd McCarthy, Variety

“After Palermo Shooting ended (with a title card offering the film as a tribute “To Ingmar (Bergman) and Michelangelo (Antonioni),” which made me imagine Bergman and Antonioni saying Uh, thanks, but. … from the next world), the Cannes press audience booed and laughed and stumbled out into the streets for detailed digressions and discussions on how, exactly, Wenders had, as our British friends say, lost the plot. Palermo Shooting goes fairly off the mark, or fires blanks, or has a damp fuse; I’m not sure about which firearm metaphor applies here, and if Wenders can’t be bothered to have any cohesion to his signs and symbols, why should I? Palermo Shooting is hardly the worst film I’ve ever seen at Cannes — Southland Tales still takes the Palme d’Junk in my book — but it’s still a little sad to see a major filmmaker make such a series of major mistakes in the name of a fairly minor film.” – James Rocchi, Cinematical

“Vaporous, tendentious and inescapably silly, the film livens up briefly when Dennis Hopper takes centre stage: he at least knows how to savour the script’s more ludicrous resonances. When Hopper’s Death complains, ‘Why do I always have to play the bad guy” he gives the film its only merited laugh, among many accidental ones (one of them provided by the cameo appearance of a spectral, hologram-like Lou Reed). [...] Campino is a glumly narcissistic presence, his discomfort more than matched by the coyly wooden Mezzogiorno. An end title dedicates the film to ‘Ingmar and Michelangelo’; nearly as sad as their passing is the fact that Wenders’s once-considerable talent now seems virtually a lost cause. But he can still pick a decent jukebox-style soundtrack, and some redeeming interest is provided by the modish alt.rock likes of Beirut, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and Calexico in heavy rotation.” – Jonathan Romney, Screen Daily

Personal Thoughts

Personally, I think critics have been a bit too hard on The Palermo Shooting and director Wenders, even though I can certainly understand where the accusations of pretension and pointlessness are stemming from. While I would certainly agree the film lacks a point in the sense that you’re left with very little thoughts on the film once the end credits roll, if you’re able to get past that, The Palermo Shooting is a passable, small, philosophical piece about life and death — and nothing more to it. On the other hand, perhaps I also missed a point or two along the way, as spoken languages in the film include Italian and German in addition to English, while I’m fluent in the third only.

Milla Jovovich makes a small but all the more cute and natural cameo appearance in the film as her model self as well as photographer Finn’s “longtime friend”. Although she contributes little to the story of the film, her fashion shoot segments are interesting to watch, especially the second, in which she poses nude for Finn’s black-and-white portrait shoot. Stunning.

Below are some The Palermo Shooting-related links that may be of interest to you.

• The Palermo Shooting official site
• The Palermo Shooting TFL-approved fanlisting
• The Palermo Shooting TFL-approved Milla character fanlisting
• The Palermo Shooting at IMDb.com
• The Palermo Shooting at RottenTomatoes.com
• The Palermo Shooting at Wikipedia.org

• Wim Wenders at IMDb.com
• Wim Wenders at Wikipedia.org