Val Kilmer: 10 Essential Movies

A Julliard graduate, a movie star, an actor who could play anything from fantasy heroes to flyboy villains, bank robbers to superheroes, dashing lead roles or demented sidekicks — Val Kilmer was all of these things, and way, way more. (For insight into the exact nature of that “more,” see: Val, the autobiographical documentary he produced out of his dozens of home movies and self-shot video testimonials.) Despite the fact that Kilmer has been battling health issues off and on for a little over a decade, his death at age 65 still came as a shock. Yet we still have his movies, and the legacy he left behind could not be more of a testament to his talent, his presence onscreen, and his ability to not only take huge risks but to make them pay off, big-time. Here are our picks for his 10 best performances, from Top Secret! to Top Gun: Maverick. We’ll miss you, Val.

‘Top Secret!’ (1984)

As a teen, Kilmer had frequented the Kentucky Fried Theater in Los Angeles, where the unholy trinity of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker wrote sketch comedy that pushed the boundaries of good taste; he was a huge fan of Kentucky Fried Movie, the 1977 film they’d made with John Landis that captured their signature bits for posterity, as well. So when the ZAZ team wanted to cast Kilmer in the follow-up to their hit movie Airplane! (1980), the usually dead-serious thespian was ready to go. A combo parody of Cold War spy movies and Elvis Presley musicals, Top Secret! weaponized Kilmer’s handsomeness and gave him an opportunity to prove his versatility from the outset — it’s a hell of a screen debut. Plus he got to get the girl, had an early chance to play rock star (who could forget the immortal classic “Straighten the Rug”?), and put his Julliard training to use by delivering the line, “Look, I’m not the first guy who fell in love with a girl he met in a restaurant who then turned out to be the daughter of a kidnapped scientist, only to lose her to a childhood lover who she’d last seen on a deserted island and who turned out, 15 years later, to be the leader of the French underground” at warp speed. —David Fear

‘Real Genius’ (1985)

As Chris Knight, a science prodigy and soon-to-graduate senior at a West Coast engineering university, Kilmer taught his stunted brainiac roommate Mitch how to let loose — and gave us all a lesson in prioritizing fun in the process. This 1985 school comedy may not get the accolades of The Breakfast Club, or even Weird Science (both released the same year), but Real Genius holds up beautifully because of Kilmer’s smartass charisma. Whether he’s helping his fellow geeks create an ice-rink in their dorm or dropping effortlessly sharp quips — e.g. “Do you still run?” His reply: “Only when chased.” — Kilmer’s wiseacre Knight gave real-life students struggling with fitting in an escape, and maybe even a template to follow. —Joseph Hudak

‘Top Gun’ (1986)

“That’s Iceman …it’s the way he flies: Ice-cold. No mistakes.” Kilmer initially wasn’t interested in being in Tony Scott’s ode to fast jets and the need-for-speed men who fly them; he felt it was just another warmongering bit of military propaganda. (He’s characteristically blunt about his first impression in his memoir: “I didn’t want the part. I didn’t care about the film. The story didn’t interest me.”) But director Tony Scott was determined to cast Kilmer as Tom “Iceman” Kazansky, the too-cool-for-flight-school rival to Tom Cruise’s Maverick, and his passion eventually won the reluctant actor over. It’s now impossible to think of the movie without Kilmer’s performance as the unflappable pilot, offering the perfect contrast to Cruise’s livewire, hothead energy, or the way he bestows his bromantic blessing on the new best-of-the-best flyboy with, “You can be my wingman anytime.” When he finally watched the finished product, Kilmer rushed into the offices of producers Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson and screamed, “You’ve done it!” He knew an iconic blockbuster when he saw one. —D.F.

‘Willow’ (1988)

By the late Eighties, Kilmer had already established himself as one of the most suave actors on screen, whether he was playing a college genius who partied and casually built lasers or a naval aviator with a killer volleyball serve. In Ron Howard’s fantasy film, he took that cocky, cool-guy persona to the next level. His goofy mercenary, Madmartigan, assists the title character on a quest to save a very adorable infant princess. Never mind that he spends a lot of his time trapped in cages and under a delirious love spell (with future wife, Joanne Whalley); he makes up for it by sword fighting shirtless in the snow and kicking lots of warrior ass. Kilmer wasn’t able to join the failed Disney+ sequel series, but the role of Madmartigan is still part of his legacy. As he said in 2013, “[I] can’t go through an airport without someone saying, ‘Peck peck peck peck peck peck!’” —Angie Martoccio

‘The Doors’ (1991)

Before there were a million music biopics hitting the multiplex en masse, there was Oliver Stone’s tribute to Jim Morrison — poet, songwriter, shamanic sex symbol and slithering frontman for the Doors. And to watch Kilmer’s immersive, go-for-broke take on the ’60s posterboy for rock & roll self-destruction is to understand why he may have been the only person who could pull such a monumental task off circa the early 1990s. He trained for months to match Morrison’s baritone-tenor, and gave both Stone and the surviving members of the group recordings of songs he’d sung in character, played next to Morrison’s original vocals. None of them could tell which ones were Val singing and which ones were Jim’s. He also managed to capture Morrison’s moody, charismatic presence, and made you understand how the man who wrote “The End”could turn a mini-Oedipal drama into a hormonal showstopper. Kilmer virtually became the Lizard King; you believed he could do anything. “I worked my ass off,” he admitted, years later. “Because I had a calling. I could not not play Jim.” —D.F.

‘Tombstone’ (1993)

All due respect to Kurt Russell, but director George P. Cosmatos’ retelling of the 1881 “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” would have been just another Western without Kilmer in the scene-stealing role of Doc Holliday. As the tubercular dentist, card sharp, and gunfighter, the actor gave a magnetic, Oscar-worthy performance — the fact that he wasn’t nominated remains one of the Academy’s all-time flubs. His roguish Holliday, in between coughing up blood, was instantly quotable too, adding lines like “Say when,” “I’m in my prime,” and, most famously, “I’m your huckleberry,” to the lexicons of wannabe cowboys everywhere. The way Kilmer slurred the one-liners to underscore Holliday’s illness (and perpetual drunkenness) added an unmistakable air of vulnerability to the character too. Not to mention loneliness: When a fellow gunslinger asks Holliday why he’s so loyal to Russell’s Wyatt Earp, he says it’s because they’re friends. “Hell, I got a lot of friends,” the man says. Doc’s reply: “I don’t.” —J.H.

‘Batman Forever’ (1995)

There’s been a lot of ink spilled over the past few decades about the behind-the-scenes turmoil surrounding the third Batman movie, from Tommy Lee Jones being not-quite-a-fan of his costar Jim Carrey to Kilmer (and Carrey) grieving the respective deaths of parents — and that’s not even taking into account the star’s feeling about the batsuit, which hampered Kilmer’s movements to the point that he described it as a literal “trap.” The main reason he took on the role after Michael Keaton had defined the modern, darker take on the superhero in two previous entries, Kilmer said later, was that he’d hoped the franchise would help him fund an artists’ community in New Mexico, where he could “write poetry and plays, and become the wild auteur I saw as my destiny.” It’s neither the best nor the worst of the various Batman films that have come out over the years. But when you take another look at this, what stands out to you now is Kilmer’s total commitment to playing both a mythological Caped Crusader and the conflicted man behind the mask. He may have been hampered by a stiff rubber outfit and had to rely on expressing everything with just his eyes and mouth, yet you can clearly see him giving 100-percent. Kilmer himself declared the film kitschy. You can’t say the same for his performance. —D.F.

‘Heat’ (1995)

Rather than go once more unto the breach in the batsuit — Kilmer had originally been tapped for a three-Batman-movie deal — the actor opted out of the superhero-movie business and chased after a crime thriller that Michael Mann was getting ready to shoot in Los Angeles. The real reason he wanted Heat, Kilmer would confess years later, was the chance to work with two of his acting heroes, De Niro and Pacino: “I’ll get to call them Al and Bob for the rest of my life.” All we can say is: He made the absolutely 100-percent correct choice. Kilmer is pitch-perfect as Chris Shiherlis, the loyal right-hand man to De Niro’s Neal McCauley and a self-destructive romantic (“For me, the sun rises and sets with her, man”) who, like his partner in crime, takes pride in being a consummate professional. Kilmer became so proficient at quickly reloading and firing an AR-15 assault rifle during the film’s legendary gunfight that apparently Pensacola’s naval training camp used it to show the proper way to do it. The fact that he won’t be able to grace Mann’s potential cinematic sequel to the greatest heist movie of all time with a cameo is itself a crime. —D.F.

‘Kiss Kiss Bang Bang’ (2005)

Kilmer spent the early part of the 2000s dodging his reputation for being “difficult” on set and taking parts that ranged from intriguing supporting roles to the kind of scuzzy, off-the-beaten men who carried wore their pain and tough experiences on their sleeves. (We’re particularly fond of his turns in the 2002 thriller The Salton Sea and, playing a seedy and exhausted John Holmes, in 2003’s Wonderland.) Screenwriter-turned-filmmaker Shane Black’s buddy comedy-slash-crime flick was a great reminder, however, that Kilmer wasn’t just an intense actor — he was someone who still had star power to burn. Yes, his character, a private detective who’s teaching an actor (Robert Downey Jr.) the tricks of his trade, is saddled with the regrettable name “Gay” Perry van Shrike. But his off-the-charts chemistry with his costar helps turn this skewed take on old noirs into something that’s both hardboiled and almost breezy, even when things get dark; listen to the banter between him and Downey Jr. in this interrogation scene, followed by Kilmer’s casual reading of “I’m going to break your nose now” before hitting a suspect. It’s one of the rougher gems in Kilmer’s back catalog, and easily one of his most underrated performances. —D.F.

‘Top Gun: Maverick’ (2022)

A 2014 throat-cancer diagnosis and the damage it did to his voice box slowed Kilmer’s career down considerably. For the most part, the actor was content to make art at his home in the Hollywood Hills, spend time with his family and finish writing his memoir, I’m Your Huckleberry. When Tom Cruise was finally able to get the long-gestating Top Gun sequel off the ground, however, he called on Kilmer for a cameo. And even viewers who aren’t die-hard fans of the original film will find themselves getting severely choked up when watching these two movie stars share the screen one final time. Having come to the retired Iceman for counsel, Maverick tries to reconcile whether he should send a younger pilot on a mission (they have history, long story) or not. At first, the former-enemy-turned-buddy simply types out “It’s time to let go,” and lets his concerned expression do the talking. Then, after hearing Maverick’s spiel, the Iceman speaks: “The Navy needs Maverick. The kid needs Maverick. That’s why I fought for you. That’s why you’re still here.” Then he needles his old pal about who the better pilot is. To hear Kilmer say all of this in a whispery rasp could not be more poignant. The same goes for the hug that the two characters — and old friends — share as the scene fades out. We wish that we could have had a dozen more moments of Kilmer onscreen in his later years. But you could not ask for a more fitting sequence to go out on. —D.F.

From Rolling Stone US.