The films that left us Val Kilmer: Top Gun, Heat, The Doors and many others

I probably saw for the first time Val Kilmer, which disappeared on April 1st, in Top Secret!a parody of the espionage films in which its beauty beauty beauty is used for sagaciously humorous purposes. Kilmer, however, understands the joke at a deeper level, so much so that in the film he is a walk, aware of his ironic role as the great and late Leslie Nielsen would have been in the films of A popped bullet.

It was precious to meet Val Kilmer like this, like a foolish boy who enjoys foolishly, because much of what has followed in his fascinating and varied career has used his charm of stars in a decidedly different way. Kilmer was perhaps famous above all as the Ariano antagonist of the most affable hunting pilot interpreted by Tom Cruise in Top guna role that Kilmer would have resumed almost 30 years later in Top Gun: Maverick. For once (in Batman Forever by Joel Schumacher) Kilmer was also Batman, a beautifully pre -amidated that is tormented by two bad grotesque and a sensual psychiatrist played by Nicole Kidman.

Kilmer played a lot of unpleasant people, which was perfectly suited to his fame in person with a difficult character out of the screen. The actor was known for the frequent clashes with the directors and for having refused several opportunities. But something of that haughty, excessively of principle demeanor is also what made him such an interesting actor. When it was serious, as in most forgotten dramas like At first glancecould fail miserably. But in gender films that knew how to use it, its strange bearing had a bewitching effect.

Think of Kilmer with a horse tail shooting with a semi -automatic weapon along the chasm of a canyon in a road in the center of Los Angeles in Heat Of Michael Mann. We do not know much about the character of Kilmer in that film, but his claim of criminal audacity (an almost psychotic bond with the blow to be made) exerts a magnetic attraction. There is something terribly surprising in Kilmer, with that elegant and scruffy aspect at the same time, that he throws himself against the order in that way. He is an agent of the mysterious chaos, shot down but decidedly not forgotten.

Kilmer drew to another type of madness for the bisexual vintage thriller Spirits in darknessin which he plays a colonial proud struggling with a killer lion in Africa. His character acts as a shoulder to the unhappy mercenary hunter played by Michael Douglasbut Kilmer finds a glimmer of absurd charm in that more scialbo role, which sweats, speaks with marked accent and pulsates together with the strange energy of the film. It is an interpretation of cinema stars in a film that asks someone else to be the cinema star.

This was a distinctive sign, perhaps, of the entire career of Kilmer. He took cantonate just when one would expect that one with his features and his profile would hit. Less we talk about The saint And A blonde all goldenwild attempts to make Kilmer completely mainstream, the better. But how magnificent and immense it is in Tombstoneone of the most western cult of the history of cinema! It was expected that that film had the worst in the fight against Wyatt Earpthe epic much more serious than Kevin CostnerInstead Tombstone He resisted much longer, largely thanks to Kilmer’s eccentric interpretation as Doc Holliday Dentist Dentist. It is a walk to see him getting to this semi-amiccant and semi-storey film, while he appreciates the gaze of the public and entertains himself to attract attention.

It is precisely this stramba carelessness from Fanfarone that makes it a memorable Jim Morrison in The Doors Of Oliver Stonea film on a rock star whose inheritance is mostly linked to his premature death. Kilmer seems to be done on purpose for the role, of course, but it is also able to express its bearing: that type of arrogance destined to fail that perhaps he and Morrison shared (not to mention the fact that he sang all the songs with extreme security). Few still consider the Doors a fundamental band, but Morrison’s iconography persists in part because Val Kilmer sanctioned his inheritance with such a pleased determination.

I could write something about the latest Kilmer films (his appearance, so short that he is almost a cameo, in Macgrubera subscription based on Snlor his delicate silly in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang), but instead I would like to remember Kilmer for my favorite role among those played by him. In the exception, splendid and overwhelming animated film The Prince of EgyptKilmer lends the voice to a credible and complex Moses. Furthermore, it gives voice to God himself, succeeding in the difficult undertaking to interpret the prophet as much as the Savior. Kilmer’s work in this splendid and underestimated film perhaps represents the best actor’s ability, a mix of protagonism in which it is easy to identify and ridiculous grandeur. After so many years, I still like to listen to Val Kilmer who solemnly says: “let my people go.” Just as I will always like to retrace his curious and singular filmography and remember what it meant to appreciate an actor who could be absolutely vaaglorioso and in any case save an entire people disinterestedly.