Val

“I’ve almost been fired from all my movies. Even this one.” So says Val Kilmer at the begin­ning of this por­trait of the bona fide movie star, who has grad­u­al­ly van­ished from our screens over the past decade. Mock­ing his long­stand­ing rep­u­ta­tion for being dif­fi­cult to work with clues you into the mis­chie­vous, often self-sab­o­tag­ing spir­it cap­tured here: footage culled from thou­sands of hours of near-obses­sive­ly self-filmed mate­r­i­al over 50 years, at home, on set and every­where in-between.

It’s not his alleged­ly dis­rup­tive influ­ence, though, that’s respon­si­ble for 61-year-old Kilmer’s dis­ap­pear­ing act. Diag­nosed with throat can­cer in 2015, he’s now phys­i­cal­ly frail, only able to speak in a reedy, robot­ic croak. If the ​‘voice’ here is most­ly pro­vid­ed by the uncan­ny sound-a-like of his son Jack, the astute reflec­tions on his roller­coast­er life are very much Kilmer’s own.

The film’s cred­it­ed direc­tors are Leo Scott and Ting Poo but, giv­en Kilmer’s guid­ing hand, this is overt­ly craft­ed as a self-por­trait. That’s evi­dent in his own Sharpie-drawn titles and sec­tion head­ings, decked out with his own child­like, scrap­book col­lage art. If one strug­gles to find much evi­dence of heavy­weight work in Kilmer’s fil­mog­ra­phy, this is part of his intrigu­ing contradictions.

The youngest stu­dent ever accept­ed at New York’s pres­ti­gious Juil­liard School of per­form­ing arts, Kilmer dreamed of the stage, Shake­speare, and reveal­ing ​“the place where you end and the char­ac­ter begins”. Instead, his lega­cy – as he rue­ful­ly acknowl­edges – is that every pilot in every air­port calls him by his Top Gun call­sign ​‘Ice­man’.

The film’s great­est strength is the sheer wealth of hith­er­to unseen video, detail­ing Kilmer’s pre­co­cious child­hood, Rush­more-esque movie recre­ations with his broth­ers, and dress­ing room pranks in a youth­ful stage out­ing along­side Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon. Most jaw-drop­ping of all are Kilmer’s ball­sy, self-made, ulti­mate­ly inef­fec­tive, audi­tion tapes for Stan­ley Kubrick’s Full Met­al Jack­et and Mar­tin Scorsese’s Goodfellas.

For all his good-natured Tom Cruise rib­bing on the set of Top Gun, the impres­sion is that Cruise went on to snag the high-pro­file career and direc­tors (Scors­ese and Kubrick includ­ed) Kilmer didn’t. Both reworked pop­u­lar ​’60s spy shows into block­busters, Cruise turn­ing Mis­sion: Impos­si­ble into a long-run­ning fran­chise ver­sus Kilmer’s one-and-done des­e­cra­tion of The Saint.

Some­times the line between sub­ject and film­mak­ers feels too blurred. Kilmer’s well-doc­u­ment­ed mis­be­hav­iour on 1996’s The Island of Dr More­au set is made to look benign here. What feels alto­geth­er more hon­est are his per­son­al rev­e­la­tions. How the death of his 15-year-old broth­er Wes­ley left a last­ing scar. The ill­ness that forced him to be wheeled out of a Com­ic-Con pho­to sign­ing ses­sion. The evi­dent pride in his grown-up kids Jack and Mer­cedes with Wil­low co-star and now ex-wife Joanne Whalley.

Ulti­mate­ly, that’s who this film feels like it has been made for; a reminder of the hum­bled, per­se­ver­ing man more than the oft-frus­trat­ed and frus­trat­ing actor. It might even be as fas­ci­nat­ing and touch­ing a per­for­mance as Kilmer has ever giv­en. Okay, that and Tombstone.