Val (2021)
Directed by: Ting Poo and Leo Scott
Premise: A documentary about actor Val Kilmer, covering his upbringing and career as well as the health challenges Kilmer experienced later in his life.
What Works: Val was produced by Val Kilmer and much of the documentary consists of footage that he shot. Kilmer was an early adopter of video recording devices and so he shot behind the scenes footage of his movies as well as casual moments among his coworkers, family, and friends. This heavy involvement of the subject in the making of a biographical documentary risks compromising the film but Val is remarkably honest and raw. In the late 1980s and early 90s Val Kilmer was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, having starred in some very successful and well received blockbuster films including Top Gun, Tombstone, Heat, and Batman Forever. His career slowed a bit in the 2000s but Kilmer was poised to make a comeback with his one-man stage show Citizen Twain. That comeback was cut short when Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014. The treatment cured the cancer but destroyed his voice, effectively ending his acting career. The documentary Val plays as a career retrospective and a personal reflection with Kilmer recounting some of his most famous roles but also elaborating on life in his later years. Kilmer was a talented writer and the film includes narration written by Kilmer and read by his son Jack. Val reveals Kilmer to have been a better actor than he may have been credited. His movie star looks and roles in blockbuster films belied a thoughtful artist who was very serious about his craft. The documentary is partly a consideration of the tension inherent to being an artist working in an industry. Some parts of Val are quite sad but Kilmer never comes across as self-pitying. The melancholy is earned and this documentary is a soulful portrait.
What Doesn’t: Viewers might expect a documentary about an actor to provide more insight into their films. Val Kilmer was in some of the most popular films of the 1980s and 90s. This documentary acknowledges those films but it doesn’t provide much insight into their production or Kilmer’s choices as an actor. He had a reputation for being a difficult actor; this may or may not have been accurate but the documentary only nods to it in relation to Kilmer’s experience on 1996’s The Island of Dr. Moreau. His family is included in the documentary but we don’t get much sense of who those people are or Kilmer’s relationship with his children.
Disc extras: Available on Amazon Prime Video.
Bottom Line: Val is a personal portrait that gets deeper and more substantive than a lot of self-aggrandizing and hagiographic celebrity profiles. It may not cover many behind the scenes details but it is a brutally honest portrait that reveals Val Kilmer as an underappreciated talent.
Episode: #1043 (April 13, 2025)