To understand his presence, you need to look at how he stole the show especially in secondary roles. That would include, surprisingly, the original Top Gun (1986). What am I talking about?
If you had to guess, how much screen time would you say he had as Iceman? Stop reading, close your eyes, and guess. Full running time of Top Gun was 110 minutes.
Don’t peek!
The answer is ten minutes. The entire recollection you just composed of Iceman was based on ten minutes of encounter.
What about Top Gun: Maverick (2022). Tom Cruise had to fight for this scene to be included. Did you cry? Don’t lie. The entire IMAX theater was crying. Screen time: Four minutes, 40 seconds.
But my favorite has to be Heat (1995). In this film, he’s playing not even second fiddle but THIRD fiddle, behind Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro.
Kilmer’s character, Chris Shiherlis, is the crew’s principal sniper and safe-cracker, and the only married man of the bunch. His relationship with his wife, played by Ashley Judd before she went batshit crazy, is something to behold. They both give fantastic performances, understated, in stark contrast to not only Pacino and DeNiro, but the entire violent framework of the film.
But the scene I am posting below is the iconic bank robbery shootout, because of course I am. During production, DeNiro’s crew were trained in weaponry/tactics by actual ex-Special Forces, if I remember correctly. Watch Kilmer drop his mag, reload, and resume the firefight in under two seconds, at the eight minute mark.
Not only did the visuals come off spectacular, when they went to overdub the sound in post-production, they ended up using the original recording from the street, because it sounded so good.
Side note, this scene played out in real life two years later, in the North Hollywood Shootout. It led to law enforcement finally ditching their revolvers and adopting semi-auto sidearms, and carrying rifles in their vehicles as SOP. You might even say it spurred the full militarization of local LE, down to the outlandish SWAT units of today.
Here is the clip, but you will have to click through to youtube due to R rating. Violence and language, obviously. See the whole movie for Val, and pray he made it through the spiritual warfare in real life. RIP.
I loved him in Tombstone.
I’m with you, Jean Marie. His portrayal of Doc Holliday was riveting. Kilmer was truly one of the most underrated actors ever.. I feel sad thinking about his personal life though. He is rumored to have been baptized Catholic, but he lived his life as a Christian Scientist. May God have mercy on his soul.
Top Secret!
Putting Godfather and Godfather II aside, the best crime drama of all time for me comes down to a coin flip between “Heat”, and Michael Mann’s 1981 debut “Thief” (James Caan called it the best work he’d ever done). For a long time, I strongly considered the possibility that Thief’s Frank (Caan) and Neil McCaulay (DeNiro) were the same character. Both are high-line master thieves, both from Chicago, the ages are a match… and Frank disappears his entire life at the end of Thief. It always made sense to me that Frank relo’d to LA with a new identity and went back to work as Neil.
As for Kilmer, his work in Heat is some of the best physical acting I’ve ever seen, on the shootout alone. But it’s a great, brooding, understated performance all the way through. Even the quick scene in the beginning where he’s buying demolition charges in Arizona… everything about it is just perfectly real and naturalistic. Definitely my favorite Kilmer film, but I’d probably agree with Ann and say his Doc Holliday in “Tombstone” was the best performance of his career (he was undeniably great in The Doors too, but I really don’t like the film).
RIP.
Thief is one of the most underrated films of that period. By underrated, I mean that it is fantastic, yet shredded by the critics. I never considered that Frank could be McCaulay, but I’ve always thought that the relationship of Frank and Jessie does have parallels with Chris and Charlene (in Heat), at least until the ending.
The climactic shootout in Heat has distinct similarities with the final shootout in a TV movie from the 80s called ‘The FBI Murders’ – both are prolonged, bloody and with casualties on both sides. What more could you want? That movie was based on a real-life robbery spree committed by two men in Florida in the mid-80s which afterwards resulted in the FBI significantly upgrading their weaponry. One of the robbers was played by David Soul. I never expected Hutch to go off the deep-end like that but they do say that police and crims are two sides of the same coin.
The other robber was played by Michael Gross, at the peak of his “Family Ties” sitcom dad fame. He was good. That was a quality TV movie (we used to have those, once upon a time).
The documentary on Val Kilmer on Prime is good. I think his son filmed and narrated it. Until I watched it, I thought Kilmer was a typical Hollywood self absorbed looney tune. Now he may have been a bit self absorbed… he really was an artist and a one of a kind man. His kids seem to truly love him and think he was a good father. Eternal rest grant him.
I liked him in a film that’s considered a turkey, Thunderheart. And he was on the last episode of Psych.
Heat was one of the last great films before everything turned into comic book superheros.