Another Take: ReelBob: ‘Val’ ★★★½
An intimate and free-wheeling self-portrait of an actor who paid the price for chartering his own course through Hollywood's turbulent and murky waters.
A poignancy, which I will describe later, hangs over the wild and unfettered documentary “Val.”
The movie is compiled from thousands of hours of home movies, videotapes and film reels shot by actor Val Kilmer. It examines not just his life and career, but his Quixotic search for absolute artistic truth.
Throughout much of his career, Kilmer was labeled difficult — hemlock for any actor trying to work steadily.
Kilmer earned that distinction because he wanted not only to bring the characters he played to life but reveal truths about them and — by extension — us.
Like the vast majority of us, Kilmer’s life was marked by joy and sadness, triumph and tragedy.
Kilmer was the middle of three brothers. From an early age, the boys — Mark, Val and Wesley — had artistic bents, making their own home movies and enjoying life to its fullest.
Kilmer remembers his childhood as a happy one, even after his parents divorced when he was 8.
From an early age, Kilmer knew he wanted to act. It offered him a purpose and the challenge of trying to reach perfection on stage or on film.
It seems that a video camera was a permanent attachment to Kilmer’s body. He appears to have filmed mostly every moment of his life from his days at Juilliard School’s Drama Division, where, at the time, he was the youngest applicant to be accepted.
This obsession with chronicling his life is what makes “Val” so very interesting. It captures Kilmer’s personality — whether arguing with a professor at the drama school or having fun in movie trailers or on sets with various fellow actors. These clips show him relaxed, meditative, creating or just goofing around.
As Kilmer explains late in the film, “I am a sensitive, intelligent human being with the soul of a clown.”
The event that had the most profound impact on Kilmer’s life was the death of his younger brother, Wesley, at 15, drowned in a pool during an epileptic seizure.
It left a void in Kilmer’s life that he was never able to fill.
Kilmer first came to the public’s attention in his debut movie, a spy spoof called “Top Secret!” in which he played a rock ‘n’ roll singer.
Shortly on the heels of that movie came the role for which Kilmer earned widespread recognition, that of “Iceman,” the rival fighter pilot to Tom Cruise’s “Maverick” in “Top Gun.”
“Val” shows some of the audition tapes — most notably one he filmed for Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket” — seeking roles in their movies.
Kilmer talks about some of his movies: he struggled through “Batman Forever,” a project that disappointed him; enjoyed working with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in “Heat”; reveled in donning various disguises for “The Saint”; and fought, along with his idol, Marlon Brando, with director John Frankenheimer on the disastrous “The Island of Dr. Moreau.”
The poignancy I mentioned at the beginning is the throat cancer that has ravaged Kilmer. He must speak through a tube in his throat. And age has not been kind, either. He looks a pale ghost of his former self.
Yet the inventive spark that has always propelled his career still burns.
“Val” is an intimate, self-reflective look at an actor whose refusal to compromise his values most likely hurt his career.
Still, you must admire Kilmer for sticking to his guns in a profession in which the bottom line is more valued than integrity.
“Val” opens in theaters on Friday (July 23), and debuts Aug. 6 on Amazon Prime.
I am a founding member of the Indiana Film Journalists Association. I review movies, 4K UHD, Blu-rays and DVDs for ReelBob (ReelBob.com), The Film Yap and other print and online publications. I can be reached by email at bobbloomjc@gmail.com. You also can follow me on Twitter @ReelBobBloom and on Facebook at ReelBob.com or the Indiana Film Journalists Association. My movie reviews also can be found at Rotten Tomatoes: www.rottentomatoes.com.
VAL
3½ stars out of 4
(R), language, brief nudity
