VAL

Featuring: Val Kilmer, Jack Kilmer, Mercedes Kilmer and Joanne Whalley. 
Directors: Ting Poo, Leo Scott

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ½

Val Kilmer has forever existed in a weird Hollywood limbo, a professional realm between brilliant, talented character actor and A-list heartthrob star. His darkest period professionally was also his biggest box office success - Batman Forever. His career has fluctuated between films that didn't find an audience (The Doors, The Ghost & The Darkness, Wonderland); for which he seemed awkwardly ill-suited (Willow, The Real McCoy, Red Planet); or, benefitted from his vivid support work (Tombstone,True Romance, Heat, Top Gun).

In the documentary Val, he provides a first-person account of his life - the work he’s known for, the loves he has had, the man he is now. All the footage is taken from a personal archive of material shot either by him or of him (collated by directors Ting Poo and Leo Scott), from his earliest high-school plays through to the contemplative but ebullient cancer survivor he is today. His personal journal provides the narrative, read in voice-over provided by his son Jack.

Just as the man is a unique film industry figure, so is Val that rarest of beasts - a star profile that eschews, even undermines, the subject’s celebrity to provide not an actor’s portrait, but an everyman journey of a complex individual. Industry milestones, like working with his idol Marlon Brando on the infamous Queensland shoot of The Island of Dr Moreau, ultimately seem like existential asides compared the lifelong grief of losing his teenage brother Ben, wooing then divorcing his wife Joanne Whaley, raising their children and coming to terms with the legacy of his father. 

The darkness of his past is balanced by a mature-age man’s boundless playfulness. At one point he collapses in front of the camera, only to rise from the floor giggling at his son’s panicked reaction. He can be a bit of an arsehole, as some of his directors and co-stars can attest, and which he acknowledges and attempts to put into perspective in the doco.

His late-career, last pre-cancer project Citizen Twain, in which he dons heavy make-up for his self-penned one-man show that explores the life of America’s great humorist, embodies not only the immense talent but also the rare empathy that Val Kilmer brought to his most invested characters. Those elements are what shine through in Val.