Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Val’ on Amazon Prime, a Remarkably Intimate and Artful Biographical Documentary About Val Kilmer

Now on Amazon Prime, Val is the Val Kilmer biodoc we probably didn’t want, but definitely didn’t know we needed. Turns out, the eccentric Hollywood star was, and still is, one of those (possibly annoying) people who’s constantly filming himself, and has pallets full of videotapes documenting decades of his life: home movies, audition tapes, stuff from film sets, goofy films he and his brothers made in their backyard, etc. Directors Ting Poo and Leo Scott crafted a portrait of an artist by plucking some revealing, funny, poignant and sad moments from hundreds of hours of Kilmer’s videos, and integrating it with some new, recent footage, which catches us up with the actor after a bout with throat cancer ravaged his voice, mostly ended his career and left him with a new perspective on life. The result is messy but absorbing.

VAL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The film begins with grainy washed-out VHS footage of Val and his Top Gun co-stars — yes, including Tom Cruise — clowning around in a trailer on the movie set. We then see him at home, age 60-ish, his hair pulled back in a bun, a permanent feeding tube in the front of his neck. He looks older than he is, maybe. The room looks like a cluttered artist’s workshop. His son Jack provides the voice for Val’s first-person narration, which concisely explains the state of Val’s impairment. We see Jack sit down in a studio to record his voiceover, then we get a low angle on young Val driving in a car with the windows down, the wind whipping through his spiked mullet.

Jack/Val explains how he’s spent much of his life in front of a camera, and he’s not talking about being in Batman Forever or Tombstone. He and his two brothers made funny little films spoofing their favorite movies; one is titled Teeth, about a killer shark, shot in the family swimming pool. Val was the first person he knew who had a camcorder. He used it constantly, when he was the youngest acting student in the history of Julliard, when he was visiting his parents, when he was arguing with director John Frankenheimer on the set of The Island of Dr. Moreau. He also used it to shoot audition tapes for Scorsese and Kubrick, which didn’t land him roles in Goodfellas or Full Metal Jacket, but the one he made for Oliver Stone got him cast in The Doors — fascinating stuff for pop-culture enthusiasts.

But Val does much more than just chronicle the trivia of his many career highlights. It jumps back and forth from past to present, sewn together with intimate narration about how his family was torn apart when his brother Wesley died at age 15; about his desire to play Hamlet by age 27; about the creative disappointment that came with playing Batman. We eventually hear his voice, a strained croak through the feeding tube, accompanied by helpful subtitles. He isn’t self-conscious about it — he speaks before a special screening of Tombstone, where he’s cheered by hundreds of fans, and gamely signs autographs at Comic-Con. He introduces his daughter Mercedes, who lives in the second unit of his house. His mother passes away, and he travels to her house and weeps as he puts on her bracelets and necklaces. He discusses his obsession with Mark Twain, which became a one-man theater production and a movie that few people saw. Val could’ve written a memoir, sure, but that would’ve made no sense at all for a man whose life is all about moving pictures.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Pair Val with Soleil Moon-Frye’s Kid 90 for more spot-the-famous-person-in-the-home-video footage than you can handle.

Performance Worth Watching: Val Kilmer’s. His vulnerability and humanity are on stark display here.

Memorable Dialogue: “My name is Val Kilmer. I’ve lived a magical life.” — Jack Kilmer, narrating his father’s words

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Funny, how so many famous artists write autobiographies, but those who make documentaries about themselves are so often deemed to be narcissists. It’s the same idea, but a different medium. And that’s what Kilmer is doing here — telling his story in his words with his images. We see him piecing together paper collages in crazy scrapbooks, and that’s the same basic aesthetic of Val, which patches together a dozen different visual textures into a remarkable portrait. Many others of his status might trot out all their celebrity friends to gush and throw around the word “genius” in between all your favorite movie clips, but the way Kilmer does it is right in line with who he is today. That’s his genius.

We likely have an idea of Kilmer as a bit of a kook, the guy who’s publicly shared his odd philosophies (“I don’t believe in death”) and had a reputation of being “difficult to work with” on movie sets. He addresses the latter point by saying he wanted to be an artist, and found himself at odds with an industry that was mostly interested in commercial success. He was a pretty face on screen, but Val is his reality. It’s as honest as it gets. His heartbreak and joy are splayed out for everyone to see, in an old video he made for his kids on Easter because he couldn’t be with them after he and wife Joanne Whalley divorced, in recent footage of him goofing around with Jack and Mercedes. The film is contemplative, indulgent, engrossing, penetrating, amusing, frustrating. Sometimes, it’s painfully detailed; sometimes, it’s annoyingly impressionistic. The contrast between the robust but damaged man we see and the visages of Iceman and Doc Holliday is profound — maybe Val doesn’t believe in death because his movies will live forever.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Val always feels like art, and therefore truth.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Val on Amazon Prime