Val Kilmer reveals all in documentary Val

Val Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2015. He survived but the treatment rendered him almost speechless. When he does talk in this movie, he has to cover a hole in his throat to do so. © 2020 A24 DISTRIBUTION, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Val (MA15+)
Amazon Prime
★★★★

Here’s one for this newspaper’s quiz master Stephen Samuelson: In which movie do Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon drop their trousers and waggle their bums at the audience?

You say Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River from 2003? Not a bad guess as it’s their only feature film together. However, the correct answer is the fascinating, revelatory new documentary Val, written, narrated, filmed by and starring 61-year-old American actor Val Kilmer.

The cheeky scene in question dates to 1983 and the Broadway debut of John Byrne’s stage drama The Slab Boys. Kilmer, who studied Euripides, Chekhov and Shakespeare at The Juilliard School, was cast as the lead.

“Then,” he recalls, “as the second lead because Kevin Bacon was available, then as the third lead because Sean Penn was available. I went from being the star of the play to the character who was the butt of every joke.”

The now famous butts of Penn and Bacon are captured on the video camera Kilmer has taken everywhere, including the dressing rooms. He shares them, and much more, in this 108-minute documentary about his life as an actor.

Kilmer decided to open his archive – 1000 hours of personal videos, home movies from his childhood onwards, unsuccessful audition tapes sent to Stanley Kubrick and unused reels from his films – after he was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2015.

He survived but the treatment rendered him almost speechless. When he does talk in this movie, he has to cover a hole in his throat to do so. His voice is rasping and subtitles are used. The longer narration is spoken by his actor son Jack Kilmer.

“I have wanted to tell a story about acting for a very long time,” he says. “About the place where you end and the character begins. About truth and illusion.”

Kilmer unmasks a lot of the illusion. Being Batman, as he was in Batman Forever (1995) might be “every boy’s dream”, until that boy has to be the caped crusader in a film.

He says he was so excited that he took the role without reading the script. Once on set, however, the experience was “crushed by the reality of the bat suit”. He could barely move, hear or breathe.

“You do an hour of acting, then fall down, hyperventilate and need oxygen and water,” he says.

The actor, who followed Michael Keaton in the role, said no to the next movie and was succeeded by George Clooney. There’s a temptation to see him as sandwiched between two stars, but that’s not how he sees it.

His passion for serious acting is clear. He speaks of the “pure joy” of his next film, Michael Mann’s Heat, alongside Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.

The movie for which he is most famous, the one for which he is still besieged for autographs, is his third, Tony Scott’s Top Gun (1986), in which he is the “Iceman”, Tom Cruise’s rival turned wingman.

“Believe it or not, I didn’t want to do Top Gun at first. I thought the script was silly and I disliked warmongering films,” Kilmer says.

But he was on a contract so he did it and in this viewer’s opinion the Iceman is the most interesting character. The off-set videos from this movie, including Cruise dancing at a nightclub, are wonderful to see.

However, the unscripted moment that is almost priceless comes from The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996), which was filmed in Queensland. For Kilmer, this movie realised an even bigger dream than being Batman: working with his hero, Marlon Brando.

The production was a disaster, with John Frankenheimer called in to replace the sacked director a week into filming. Brando retired to his trailer. He and Kilmer reportedly did not get on.

The moment we see, through Kilmer’s video, is the up-and-coming actor approaching the legend as he reclines in a hammock and asking him about … his childhood! Brando looks up at him and speaks. What he says is so Brando, and I will not spoil it here but leave it for viewers to see and hear.

Kilmer has a reputation as a difficult perfectionist. We see that in his exchanges with Frankenheimer. However, his fellow actors, including Nicole Kidman from Batman Forever, speak highly of him.

Of course it’s possible there’s some selective editing here. The film is directed by Leo Scott and Ting Poo but it’s a fair bet Kilmer was in charge.

Off set, there are sad stories involving Kilmer’s industrialist father, Swedish mother and two brothers. Of all the films he has made, perhaps the most important, in a life sense, was his 1984 debut, Top Secret!

It was shot in London and Kilmer, being a stage actor, spent his free time at the theatre, where he saw and fell in love with English actress Joanne Whalley.

“She was brilliant,” he remembers of her performance, “and I was in town making fluff.”

He followed her and the rest of the cast to a post-performance pub, but was too shy to speak to her. Two years later, however, they were cast in the same movie, Willow, and he did work up the courage. Our main narrator, Jack, is one of their children.

Kilmer notes the 12 months he spent living as Jim Morrison to make The Doors (1991) was tough on his marriage, not least because of the permanent leather pants. But it was when he was making the cursed Dr. Moreau that they divorced.

“What we strive for as actors is a performance so true that audiences can see themselves in it,” he says. “The good, bad and ugly.”

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The Suicide Squad (MA15+)
In cinemas 
★★★

If you have a feeling you have already seen The Suicide Squad, featuring the extremely bad girls and boys of DC Comics, you are not alone. In 2016, Suicide Squad, written and directed by David Ayer and with Margot Robbie, Will Smith and Jared Leto heading an ensemble cast, did well at the box office but was shown the door by the critics.

Five years later, a new writer-director, James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy and its sequel), is in the chair. He insists the new film is not a remake, reboot, prequel or sequel. Some of the stars return, including Robbie and fellow Australian Jai Courtney, but other important ones are absent. 

Also missing is any backstory on these metahuman characters, who are never-to-be-released criminals signed up for black op missions by the US government. It feels like the new director has added one word, “The”, to the title and removed lots of other longer words from the story. 

This means unless you know the comic books, or have seen previous films such as Birds of Prey (2020), in which Robbie is spectacular, you will not realise her character, Harley Quinn, is a psychotic psychiatrist and ex-flame of The Joker. 

Nor will you know anything about the hybrid animal-humans such as The Weasel (voiced by Sean Gunn, the director’s younger brother) or King Shark (voiced by Sylvester Stallone, who works some magic with this misunderstood man-eater).

As one of the characters says early on, after being introduced to Weasel in Belle Reve maximum security federal prison: “What the f--k?” The reluctant mission leader, Bloodsport (Idris Elba), replies: “I didn’t pick the damn team.” 

At least the fact that Bloodsport shot Superman with a Kryptonite bullet in Suicide Squad is mentioned. And to be fair this not knowing does not ruin the movie, which is humorously self-aware and spectacularly bloody, but it does make the characters less interesting than they should be.

The action opens with Task Force X, aka The Suicide Squad, split into two teams. Team 1, led by Rick Flagg (Joel Kinnaman) and including Harley Quinn and Captain Boomerang (Courtney), storms the beach and meets hostile fire. Team 2, led by Bloodsport and including his macho rival Peacemaker (a deadpan John Cena in one of his best roles), arrive via a different route.

Peter Capaldi, Idris Elba, John Cena, Joel Kinnaman, and Margot Robbie in The Suicide Squad (2021)

In short, blood, guts, arms, legs and heads spill anywhere and everywhere. The surviving supervillain superheroes (yes, some die, or at least seem to) regroup and continue the mission ordered by their boss Amanda Walker (Oscar-winner Viola Davis): infiltrate a fortified lab and terminate a secret weapons program, one so powerful it could bring the US to its knees.

The scientist in charge is Gaius Grieves, also known as The Thinker. He has unexplained electrodes sticking out of his head. Again, there is no psychological furnishing of who should be a pivotal character and Peter Capaldi, such a loquacious actor, is regrettably restrained in the role.

Though when the secret weapon itself is unleashed, it is bizarrely funny.

Elba and Cena have fun with their d--k-swinging contest and Robbie, in her best scenes, is a knockout.

The soundtrack is well-chosen. The film opens with Johnny Cash singing Folsom Prison Blues as the squad members discard their prison jumpsuits, and one of the highlights is a red-dressed Harley Quinn doing her thing to Just a Gigolo, sung by Louis Prima.

At 132 minutes, this movie is at least 20 minutes too long. I quite liked it, and laughed a lot, but then I’m fond of sweary, sanguinary, shticky movies, and I’m a fan of Margot Robbie, as an actor and filmmaker, which also means I did know the backstory of the unflappable, unstoppable Dr Harleen Frances Quinzel.