Val Kilmer is more than just an intensely watchable actor. He is one of the greatest actors of his generation. No, more than that--he is a god. Well, his awesomeness status has dipped a bit since agreeing to appear on the remake of the original Hasselhoff vehicle (get it! GET IT!!!!) Knight Rider. So, it is worth remembering just what the guy did that was so memorable that the guy did in the first place. Here's ten of my favorite Kilmer performances.
- Spartan
It's a shame that this David Mamet movie was so little seen that many people seem to think that Spartan was a direct-to-video affair. It's far more than that for a few reasons, the first among them being the intense lead performance by Val Kilmer as a U.S. government agent known simply as "Scott". The movie involves a kidnapping--of the President's daughter, played by Kristen Bell(!)--and since it's a Mamet movie there's just got to be a con in there somewhere. What's most interesting about the movie is that the character development is kept to a minimum. Instead, we just learn more about the characters as the movie goes on, and our impressions of the characters are continually challenged by Mamet's script. I've only seen that done effectively in the first season of The Wire, but Mamet gives us a series of people who aren't what they appear, and slowly lets us discover who they are along with him. Sure, the movie's third act is a little weak (though not as weak as some would have us believe), but this is one of Mamet's better films: it's accessible and even moving, and with Kilmer's character we see a character that's not like the many other federal agents portrayed on screen. His motives for much of the film are opaque, and his struggles are internal, but he comes up exceeding expectations, and this is just a fun performance to watch Kilmer beat up, stab, and shoot lots of bad guys. He certainly seems to be having fun, and so are we. - The Salton Sea
Another intense Kilmer film. This one places Kilmer squarely in the world of speed freaks. He plays a man who seeks revenge on a pair of dirty cops that killed his wife by insinuating himself into their beat as a speed freak. Not only does the movie feature the always-enjoyable Adam Goldberg and Peter Sarsgaard as fellow tweakers, but it allows Kilmer to play a character who has lost himself in his quest for revenge that, even if successful, will not bring back the old days. It's nihilistic, but then so is the movie itself. Still, it's pretty creative in its approach to the standard old revenge plot, and Kilmer really nails the drugged-up thing, too. Once again, one senses an attempt to actually create some new characters and a new kind of look and feel. The ending could have been stronger, but the film stays with you in a way movies usually do not, like Sin City, for example: it's almost as though they impact different centers of the brain that movies usually do not hit. - Top Secret
Kilmer stars as a young rock god (who is so popular that he headlines concerts at Radio City that will, time permitting, feature Frank Sinatra) who agrees to perform a concert in Nazi East Germany (yes, a contradiction, but it's part of the joke), quickly finds himself in the middle of a plot to overthrow the government. It's a comedy film (my favorite part is when he fires a machine gun into a group of resistance and Nazi fighters alike and only the Nazis fall down), but Kilmer shows that he can be funny and that he can pull off the role of a vapid but savant-like rocker like nobody's business. Supposedly he sang all the lightly-modified Elvis and Beach Boys numbers in the film, but we all knew that he could sing, right? - The Island of Doctor Moreau
This is where things get tricky. "Island" was a pretty bad film: the acting, by Brando in particular, was silly and out of control. The "humanimals" are more silly than frightening, especially Brando's mini-me (which was the inspiration for Dr. Evil's mini-me in Austin Powers), and the message about, like, not messing with nature and shit (as Kilmer's character might put it) is hopelessly muddled. Still, Kilmer almost saves the movie with a performance that is so odd it has to be seen to be believed. Kilmer acts as though stoned in almost every scene, until Brando's character departs the film, when he effectively takes the place of Brando and the movie really kicks into overdrive. He dons Brando's pancake makeup, delivers an uncanny Brando impersonation, and generally acts even more batshit crazy than Brando did until he (spoiler alert) too gets killed by the humanimals, but only after saying "I wanna go to dog heaven," which is not a bad final line, only it's not his final line. Still, he steals the movie, and the stories of Kilmer making veteran director John Frankenheimer cry are simply too amusing. - The Doors
Okay, so let's get a few things straight. I loathe Oliver Stone. His best film, Platoon, was competent and personal but not really original--there's half a dozen war films that do similar things to Platoon just as well as Stone's film does. And once you move into the 1990s, you get stuff like Nixon--prestige-y and unwatchable--and stuff like Natural Born Killers that are just hamfisted, didactic crap. Supposedly, Stone was originally on tap to direct American Psycho, which would have been another terrible, hamfisted statement about the greed of the 1980s rather than the modern classic we all know that it is. Let's just put it this way: Ollie Stone just doesn't do "subtle." Or, more recently, he doesn't seem to do "good" either, as one of the literally dozens of people who saw Alexander can no doubt attest (I never saw it, though I shall some day). However, The Doors remains interesting in many ways. Stone tackles 60's counterculture in his own special way (i.e. showing it to almost comic levels of excess) and it surely integrates slickly with his politics, but it works as a showcase for Val Kilmer's legendary channeling of frontman Jim Morrison. Morrison's a singularly interesting character, and Kilmer's performance goes beyond the mimetic performances that have been all the rage in recent years by actually trying to get at why Morrison was the way he was. Was he a shaman in modern times? Stone and Kilmer, to their credit, aren't content to just make a movie of Kilmer covering Doors songs, and even if the film doesn't really get into Morrison's head, it does contribute something to the conversation. - Tombstone
It's a genre exercise from a decade ago, but Tombstone reaches a bit higher than just that, thanks to Val Kilmer's scene-stealing performance. It's a career milestone for Kilmer--the performance is pitch-perfect throughout--there's no false moment to be found--and his Doc Holliday knows exactly when to lay on the charm and when to reach for the gun. He received no Oscar nomination for his role, which really is the definitive treatment of the character on film, and perhaps the finest performance Kilmer has delivered to date. Oh well. - Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
It's a postmodern experiment on film, but it's less a mindfuck as a movie that delights in pulling everthing together into a cohesive plot that features a bunch of exciting twists and turns, with a little bit of fourth-wall breaking along the way. Kiss Kiss also happens to feature three of the most appealing actors out there: Kilmer, who is funny, manic, and short-tempered as a gay private detective; Robert Downey, Jr., who is funny and neurotic as a thief-turned-actor who helps Kilmer crack a murder mystery; and Michelle Monaghan, who plays Downey Jr.'s lost love and is also funny. The chemistry is really exceptional, and the action is more played for laughs than in earnest, which is fine since the comedy generally hits its targets. At times it feels a little too much like showbiz inside baseball, but it's still a pretty effective genre exercise. I'm just not that sure what the genre is, or if that's a question that matters. At the very least it's an entertainingly original movie. - Heat
Kilmer's supporting role in Heat is often overlooked next to career turns for both Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, but his role is critical. Both Pacino and De Niro play professionals on opposite sides of the law who have similar temperaments and personalities. They're not both "different sides of the same coin," or any other cliche like that, but they're driven by similar things and they're hell-bent on getting what they want, and they are destroyed by their respective natures to varying degrees. Kilmer, however, is the counterpoint to this battle of wills. He plays De Niro's sidekick, and unlike De Niro, he is able to change when the situation requires it, and his mutability saves him at the end of the movie. - Top Gun
Yeah, I never much liked Top Gun. Still, Kilmer's hammy but still amusing performance as Tom "The Iceman" Kanzansky is worth the price of admission (i.e. it's worth watching on TNT if you're bored). It's kind of a braindead, testosterone-charged movie, so I really don't have much to say, except that Kilmer steals every scene he's in away from Tom Cruise, and that he and Cruise evidently developed an intense rivalry and hate each other to this day. Considering how nutty Tom Cruise has become, one can only suspect that Kilmer was just ahead of the curve. - Batman Forever
It is with some trepidation that I put this movie on the list, because it is a pretty terrible movie altogether. Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carrey redefine "over the top" by giving two of the most grating, one-note, over-exuberant performances ever committed to film, and Nicole Kidman and Chris O'Donnell fare little better. It's not Batman and Robin-level bad, but Joel Schumaker's first foray into the Batman franchise certainly laid the seeds for that cluster-you know what that its predecessor was. However, Kilmer's performance is pretty good, and it stands out for its refresing lack of theatrics. Some have commented that Kilmer's performance in the movie is too restrained and wooden (how could it not compared to Tommy Lee Jones's hysterical Two-Face?), but it fits in well with the idea that Wayne/Batman is having an identity crisis and doesn't know which world he belongs in, and that he might be faking it in both worlds. Kilmer's performance is, at least, recognizable as a human being--Jones and Carrey act as though they were taught to act by a wizard from the sixth dimension. Val Kilmer had previously found himself as a headlining lead actor, as an elevator of otherwise iffy material (as in Tombstone) and with Batman Forever he showed that he can redeem terrible movies so as to almost make them watchable. He's a man for all seasons--way more so than that pervert St. Sir Thomas More.
