Val (2021) Updated

Artwork: Fifteen Minutes of Fame Artists: Val Kilmer-REMO-Tomer Peretz

Val (2021)

Of the sixty-five years Val Kilmer spent on Earth, roughly 40 of those have been on the big screen. During those four decades, Kilmer has managed to carve out an impressive body of work and amass a loyal following of movie fans. Fans who are willing to sit outside in the dusty dark of a humid night in New Mexico while he plays Q&A to a come as you are crowd gathered together to watch Tombstone (1993). During this segment, the actor, with roughly 112 screen acting credits to his name, laments how he is embarrassed to have to rely on rehashing his past work to provide for himself presently. Sorry, but grateful just the same. He realizes that he can still draw a paying audience because of these fans, even if it is for a film he made nearly thirty years ago.

Such is the way of Val, a 109-minute documentary/biography that eschews the traditional talking-head format commonly found within docs such as this. You may be disappointed if you expect witty anecdotal commentary from Kilmer's past loves and former co-stars. The witty anecdotal commentary comes from Kilmer himself, via a-vis narration provided by his son Jack Kilmer, and is about as brutally honest as a movie star has ever been. After being diagnosed with throat cancer and undergoing a tracheostomy, the elder Kilmer can no longer speak without the assistance of a voice box. As he reports in the movie, he is cancer-free but has lost his voice permanently.

Coupled with this narration is a massive home movie library shot by Kilmer starting in the late 1970s. No other star could have a more exciting and watchable stash of home movies than Kilmer, and well-spaced snippets are peppered throughout the film. If that is the "hook" to get the audience to sit down and watch, no finer could have been devised. To ensure, filmmakers Ting Poo and Leo Scott begin the film with one such chunk of well-placed nostalgia by showing us Rick Rossovich aping it up for a camera held by Kilmer on the set of Top Gun (1986), entertaining his castmates in-between shooting.

If the home movie angle were the only thing going for it, I would still recommend Val for those of you who are fascinated with the "real lives" of the rich and famous. However, the documentary has a bit more going on than just those quick peeks into movie-making's past.

The movie serves as a historic play-by-play of Val Kilmer's life, warts and all. Is he dedicated to the craft of acting? Of course, he is, and we see that in some of the stage work shown here. Was he sometimes an asshole on set? Of course, he was, and we get to see that too—several examples of it.  The bulk of that comes from his hand-held work documentation on The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996). (For the full Val Kilmer/Dr. Moreau experience, one could couple this doc with another called Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau (2014). Watch the two docs and skip the actual movie!)

Val Kilmer's life's myriad ups and downs are laid bare here for all to see, even if sometimes what we are witnessing may be challenging to believe. One scene that has drawn criticism among internet people with nothing better to do shows Kilmer trying on his mother's jewelry while sobbing uncontrollably. This scene comes just after his mother has passed away. We may see Kilmer grieving for his mother, whom he will never see again. It is also possible we are seeing him acting, and if that is the case, we are reminded of just how outstanding an actor Val Kilmer was.

Val offers the best representation of Val Kilmer, the person we have not had the opportunity to know until now. Based on that notion alone, the documentary is worth watching and is a permanent record of the man's life.