Val (2021)
The life you live is the story you tell.
For over 40 years Val Kilmer, one of Hollywood's most mercurial and/or misunderstood actors, has been documenting his own life and craft through film and video. He has amassed thousands of hours of footage, from 16mm home movies made with his brothers, to time spent in iconic roles for blockbuster movies like Top Gun, The Doors, Tombstone, and Batman Forever. This raw, wildly original and unflinching documentary reveals a life lived to extremes and a heart-filled, sometimes hilarious look at what it means to be an artist and a complex man.
Where to watch
Amazon Prime Video
Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Trailer
Director
Ting Poo
Cast
Val Kilmer
Self 
Jack Kilmer
Self / Narrator 
Mercedes Kilmer
Self 
Joanne Whalley
Self 
Kevin Bacon
Self (archive) 
Fairuza Balk
Self (archive) 
Marlon Brando
Self (archive) 
Nicolas Cage
Self (archive) 
Jim Carrey
Self (archive) 
Cher
Self (archive) 
Tom Cruise
Self (archive) 
Nelson de la Rosa
Self (archive) User Reviews (1)
The line between fiction and reality is seldom as blurry as when it comes to actor Val Kilmer who, as clichéd as it sounds, is a true chameleon. As consumptive gunslinger Doc Holliday in Tombstone, Kilmer looks for all the world like a man who’s running late for his own funeral. And on The Doors, "He looks so uncannily like Jim Morrison that we feel like this isn't a case of casting, it's a case of possession" (Ebert). As it turns out, Kilmer has apparently held a camcorder in his hand for as long as he was strong enough to lift it, only putting it down in the stretches between "action" and "cut." This footage, spanning 800 hours of footage and 40 years of personal and professional life, is the raw material for Val, an intimate, honest, urgent, bittersweet, optimistic, hopeful documentary. "Now that it's harder to talk, I want to tell my story more than ever," says Kilmer throug…
