Val Kilmer passed away on April 1, 2025.
He was handsome and puckish. I’m tempted to describe him as louche, a word I’ve literally never used before. Robert Downey Jr. called him “chronically eccentric.” Peter Bradshaw called him “underappreciated by the film industry,” which may be true of film people but not of those of us who enjoyed his movies, often—although maybe this is just more—a bit more than we should.
Almost everyone probably has a favorite Val Kilmer role. (It’s probably not Batman.) Maybe you love The Saint. Or Heat. Maybe even Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which you should definitely watch if you haven't seen it yet!
I think the first thing I saw him in was The Doors as Jim Morrison, but for me he will always be Doc Holliday in Tombstone. In the same appreciation article linked above, Bradshaw says Kilmer almost “stole the picture” from Kurt Russell. There’s no almost about it, at least not for me. He'll always be everyone's Huckleberry.
What’s your favorite Val Kilmer role?
Josie Kafka is a full-time cat servant and part-time rogue demon hunter. (What's a rogue demon?)
I will always have a soft spot for his very first role in Top Secret!, one of the funniest and most underrated movies ever made.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely Doc Holliday. The other actors were really good too, the writing, the direction, the cinematography, but Tombstone is one of my favorite movies because of Val Kilmer's performance. Just a totally unforgettable character.
ReplyDeleteDid someone say about Kilmer that he was a great character actor trapped in a leading man's body? Because he was.
Watched Tombstone last night, and Kilmer really did steal the show — which is quite the accomplishment, given how hard Kurt Russell worked to steal the entire script from everyone else! (Sam Elliott is quoted as saying that if he'd known how the film was going to end up after Russell and Cosmatos took control, 'I wouldn't have agreed to do this shit.')
ReplyDeleteAnyway, it's a fun film nonetheless, though one can see the flaws and I do wonder what Jarre's original vision would have been like. I think, however, that Val Kilmer would have been awesome regardless.
Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang is one of my favourite films, and Kilmer simply shines in it. I mean, when you eclipse an attention-seeker like Robert Downey Jr in a film where he's the lead, you're something special.
I remember Top Secret! from many, many years ago, and have put it on my list of films to watch soon — probably this week. Another great comedy was, of course, Real Genius, which was by far the best of the 'revenge of the nerds' spate of films from that era, and the only one that has come even close to aging reasonably.
And there was Top Gun, and The Ghost and the Darkness, and Willow, and so many others. I'm not sure I can pick a favourite role, though I agree Tombstone and Doc Holliday are hard to beat.
I'm actually looking forward to seeing him play himself in Val, which is on my list.
When I first say this, I thought that it was a very dumb April Fool's joke. It was only after I saw multiple articles that I believed it.
ReplyDeleteKilmer will always be Iceman to me, though. He's only in the first movie for all of ten minutes, but I would have sworn that it was longer. And his appearance in the second one made me cry.
Mad Maridgan in Willow. I haven't seen it in years now, as I posted in the Willow review here, but I loved him there. Chris Knight in Real Genius is my 2nd favorite of his. That movie was goofy fun, and he was great in it.
ReplyDeleteMadmartigan for me as well. Willow forever!
ReplyDeleteI know he has so many more important roles but what really made him stand out to me first was his portrayal of Elvis's spirit in Tarantino's True Romance, as imagined by Christian Slater's character. You don't even really get to see him, his face, I'm guessing because they couldn't get the rights or however that stuff works. But he really sold it, mostly through his voice. I didn't care that much for the movie as a whole but Slater's character's special and weird relationship to his idol made it more than worth sitting through.
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