Val Kilmer has had ups and downs during his career. Some great first roles, but also outstanding supporting roles in memorable films, as well as more complicated moments in productions to forget. However, the actor remains a mythical figure of cinema. Here is the proof with his best films according to us.
Top Gun / Top Gun maverick
Whether in Top Gun (1986) or its sequel Top Gun maverick (2022), Val Kilmer has only a secondary role. And yet, impossible to make a top of his best films without mentioning this combo. Admittedly, Tom Cruise is the star there, and Val Kilmer embodies his rival in the first film. But his role asIceman will not have escaped anyone. Faced with the talented but turbulent Maverick (Tom Cruise), Iceman presents himself as a serious pilot, not bad at beach volleyball, and attentive to respecting the rules of the aviation school. Top Gun. In front of Maverick’s piloting talent and loyalty, he will end up respecting him despite everything and becoming his faithful friend.
This friendly relationship is then presented in Top Gun mavericktime of a moving scene where Val Kilmer appears weakened. Recall that in 2015 the actor was diagnosed with laryngeal cancer. He has since undergone two tracheostomies. Thus, this sequence is as much a tribute to Iceman who lives his last days, as to Val Kilmer whose career and journey command respect.
Willow
Just after Top GunVal Kilmer is this time in the foreground of the fantasy Willow (1988). The film imagines a world where the terrible Bavmorda reigns. But a prophecy announces that a child will one day be responsible for her loss. She then decides to eliminate all the newborns. But the young Elora is saved and sent by chance to of the Nelwyn people (small people). The father of the Willow family having found her, it is he who is sent on a mission to return her to the first Daïkini he will meet. And so it is to Madmartigan (Val Kilmer) that he agrees to entrust it. A warrior seemingly without morals, but who will end up revealing his heroism alongside Willow.
Willow is an exciting show. An original adventure with controlled moments of humor. Inside, Val Kilmer is more than credible sword in hand. For the record, it was on the set of this film that the actor met his wife Joanne Whalley, who plays Bavmorda’s daughter, Sorsha. Together they had two children but divorced in 1996.
The Doors
In 1991, Oliver Stone offered Val Kilmer his most inhabited role. He finds himself with the heavy task of embodying the famous Jim Morrison, leader of The Doors, in the eponymous film. A work in which the actor gives himself entirely. He doesn’t play the singer, he becomes one, even if it means driving Joanne Whalley crazy by listening to the band’s songs over and over.
The Doors therefore follows the rise of Jim Morrison in music. The film wants to be precise in what it shows, while allowing itself certain freedoms and hallucinatory passages. Drugs and alcohol impacted the life of Morrison Magnificent figure of music, the artist died at 27in her bath in a Parisian apartment.
Heat
When we think of Heat (1996), the two faces that come to us first are those of Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. The first plays Inspector Vincent Hanna who tries to arrest Neil McCauley, a criminal specializing in bank heists and played by the second. If the whole film revolves around this duo, the supporting roles are numerous. Among them, therefore, there is Chris, performed by Val Kilmer. Again the actor offers a sacred performance. Chris is a complex man, partly broken and unable to properly maintain his family life with Charlene (Ashley Judd) and her son.
For this role, Val Kilmer was entitled to intensive training until he was able to fire a submachine gun and reload his weapon extremely quickly. We could highlight many scenes of the actor in the film like shooting or when he wakes up in Neil’s apartment. But for us, if we had to remember just one moment, it would probably be this moment when Charlene is about to betray him before changing her mind, saving him while breaking his heart. Yet another proof of his talent as an actor, capable in an instant of going through different emotions and moving us.
kiss kiss bang bang
kiss kiss bang bang (2005) especially revived the career of Robert Downey Jr. But Val Kilmer is not left out in this film of Shane Black. The filmmaker portrays Harry Lockhart, a poor thief in…
