Hollywood has lost one of the greats. A performer devoted to his craft and a gifted artist in multiple mediums, Val Kilmer will be dearly missed. His fans, though, have an impressive body of work to binge to get a full sense of just how adept he was in every genre he touched. For instance, while known as a serious performer, Kilmer got his start in comedy, first with 1984’s spy spoof Top Secret!, from the creative minds behind Airplane! before moving into the deceptively smart college comedy Real Genius. Then, of course, he became one of the biggest stars of the ’90s, most notably taking up the cape and cowl from Michael Keaton for Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever.
And, while Batman Forever wasn’t enough of a critical darling to make it onto IMDb voters’ top 10, it remains one of its respective decade’s most thoroughly entertaining blockbusters. Also not making the cut were Top Gun, Thunderheart, and The Ghost and the Darkness, but those films are very much worth a rental.
10) The Doors
Oliver Stone is a divisive filmmaker, and justifiably so. His works are more often than not heavy-handed and overlong. But with The Doors, he proved to be a good match for the material. But not as good a match as Kilmer.
In short, Kilmer’s take on Jim Morrison is spot on. He nails the iconic singer’s baritone voice just as he captures the man’s swagger and, ultimately, lost nature. All in all, The Doors is one of Stone’s better films, and that’s because of Kilmer more than anyone else. That said, the supporting cast (including Frank Whaley, Kathleen Quinlan, Meg Ryan, and a career-best performance by Kevin Dillon) is outstanding.
Score: 7.2
9) Top Secret!
In his first film, Kilmer displayed that he fully had what it took to lead a feature film. He’s truly the star of the show in Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker’s Top Secret!, and there isn’t a frame of it that he doesn’t sell his character’s enthusiasm and naivete.
Kilmer plays rock star Nick Rivers, who travels to East Germany for his latest performance. After inadvertently joining an underground resistance movement, he begins a life as something of a spy, one currently tasked with rescuing a scientist from German militants. His real hope? To get with the scientist’s daughter.
Score: 7.2
8) Willow
Another winner from Lucasfilm (after, of course, Star Wars), Willow was and remains a charmer. Ron Howard’s fantasy film is visually stunning and features a great early role for Kilmer as Madmartigan and his future wife Joanne Whalley as Sorsha, but this is undoubtedly Warwick Davis’ movie.
Davis stars as Willow Ufgood, a farmer, family man, and aspiring sorcerer who finds a baby drifting down the river running by his village. When some hounds attack the village, it becomes clear this baby is special. The baby is part of a prophecy feared by the evil Queen Bavmorda of Nockmaar and to protect the child, Willow must team with the disaffected mercenary Madmartigan and Bavmorda’s daughter, Sorsha, who is also in pursuit of the baby but is far from the cruel woman her mother is.
Score: 7.2
[RELATED: Willow Star Talks Studying Val Kilmer’s Movie Performance]
7) The Prince of Egypt
An animated biblical film that appeals to the secular just as it appeals to the devout, The Prince of Egypt was an early critical and commercial hit for DreamWorks Animation. Kilmer’s vocal work as Moses is rock solid, providing the iconic figure a level of reasoning and empathy that makes him a figure well worth rooting for.
Kilmer is ably supported by Ralph Fiennes layered work as Rameses and the goofy chemistry displayed by Martin Short and Steve Martin as, respectively, Huy and Hotep. And, thanks to its unique mixture of hand-drawn animation and CGI, it’s a ’90s animated film that visually has aged remarkably well.
Score: 7.2
6) Felon
Most films that go direct-to-video aren’t particularly memorable or well assembled. This even applies to the majority of Kilmer’s late career DTV movies. But Felon is different.
The narrative follows Stephen Dorff’s Wade Porter, who accidentally kills a home invader with a baseball bat and is sent to prison for it. Once at San Quentin State Prison’s Security Housing Unit (solitary confinement) he meets Kilmer’s John Smith, who becomes something of a mentor to the family man.
Score: 7.4
5) Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
The Christmastime (as most Shane Black movies are) crime caper Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is an extremely well-written, stylish, and impeccably acted Noir film with an infectiously rewatchable nature to it. Aided considerably by the chemistry between Robert Downey Jr. and Kilmer, it’s just a flat-out fun movie with an engrossing plot and a mixture of laughs and surprises that help it stand as a cult classic.
The love letter to the hardboiled detective literary genre follows Downey Jr.’s Harry Lockhart, a petty criminal who stumbles his way into an audition. His frenzied performance (which is really just confusion and genuine fear, considering he’s in the middle of evading the police) gets him the role, setting off a series of events that has him linking up with Harmony, an important figure from his past and, with the help of Kilmer’s PI “Gay” Perry van Shrike, preparing for what could be his big breakthrough onto the silver screen. But first, there’s this pesky murder investigation Harmony has brought to his attention. Perhaps that investigation and his budding acting career are somehow connected?
Score: 7.5
4) Tombstone
Tombstone, which was quasi-directed by lead star Kurt Russell, is many film fans’ favorite Western; the fact that Kilmer’s Doc Holliday is the best part of the film is all the more impressive. Stylish and exceedingly well-cast, it is truly the movie that the following year’s Wyatt Earp tried and miserably failed to be.
For the most part, the film focuses on Russell’s Wyatt Earp, who is roped into serving as the sheriff of Tucson, Arizona, even though he’s hoped to put violence behind him. But his brothers, Virgil (Sam Elliott) and Morgan (Bill Paxton), are adamant that their new home won’t be all they hope it can be until the vicious cowboys who constantly terrorize it are put six feet under. Assisting them in their conquest is the frequently inebriated Doc Holliday, who is dying of tuberculosis but considers Wyatt his one true friend. And, if he has to put his life on the line for that friendship, that’s a cause well worth dying for. Kilmer and Russell’s dynamic is even more compelling than the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, but for action fans and history buffs, don’t worry, because the film nails that as well.
Score: 7.8
3) True Romance
The same year he paired with Kurt Russell (whose breakthrough into making films as an adult was John Carpenter’s Elvis) on Tombstone, Kilmer himself played the King in the Quentin Tarantino-penned True Romance. Admittedly, Kilmer isn’t actually seen in Tony Scott’s film (save for a bit of his frame in a mirror’s reflection), but he does still share a scene with Christian Slater’s Clarence Worley as the voice in his head.
The film follows kung-fu movie enthusiast and Elvis superfan Worley as he elopes with sex worker Alabama (Patricia Arquette). The two want to run off together, but first, Worley must take out Alabama’s eccentric pimp (Gary Oldman). Upon doing so, two things happen: the first is that they “luck” into a suitcase full of cocaine; the second is that the mob comes after them for that suitcase full of cocaine. Violent hijinks quickly ensue in what would become the signature Tarantino fashion.
Score: 7.9
2) Top Gun: Maverick
Top Gun may not have made the Top 10 cut, but Joseph Kosinski’s legacy sequel Top Gun: Maverick sure did. One of the few sequels (legacy or otherwise) that manages to be an improvement over its predecessor in just about every way, Top Gun: Maverick became a modern classic pretty much from the moment it started its phenomenal commercial run.
And, now, the film has even more emotional heft than it already did, as Maverick will go down as Kilmer’s final film role. Suffice to say, the film already had quite a bit of emotional heft, from Maverick’s tutelage of Goose’s son to Iceman’s role in that tutelage (a thread which originated from Kilmer himself). Kilmer’s one scene in the film is arguably its best, which is saying something considering there’s pretty much never a dull moment throughout.
Score: 8.2
1) Heat
It’s heartbreaking that the forthcoming Heat 2 wasn’t released within Kilmer’s lifetime, because he was excited to see it. Michael Mann’s crime epic is one of the best members of its genre, ranking high with The Godfathers and Scarfaces of the world.
At the center of the film is the cat and mouse game played by Al Pacino’s Lt. Vincent Hanna and Robert De Niro’s bank robber Neil McCauley, but Heat‘s beating heart is Kilmer’s Chris Shiherlis. A criminal under the tutelage of McCauley, Shiherlis knows nothing outside robbing banks, but it becomes increasingly apparent that to continue this life will require turning his back on the woman he loves (Ashley Judd).
Score: 8.3
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