True Romance (1993)

Let me apologize for my lengthy absence from the blogging scene. I've been out of the country on various adventures. I have now returned and am back on task with my Kilmer viewing mission. I have to say, however, that while I enjoyed "True Romance" a great deal, there is not much to report on the Kilmer front. In fact, Kilmer is probably in the movie for less than two and a half minutes.

"True Romance," for the uninitiated, was written by Quinton Tarentino and the dialogue is accordingly awesome. It begins with now faded actor Christian Slater chatting up some blond at a bar during the middle of the afternoon. He's going on and on about how amazing Elvis Presley is and ends up getting shot down by the girl when he tries to ask her out. Through some weird circumstances involving a friend setting him up with a call girl on his birthday and their subsequent declaration of mutual love, the story takes what almost looks like a cheesey twist. BUT, then Val Kilmer, as a faceless sequin jumpsuit wearing southerner who is strongly implied to be Elvis, makes an appearance as a hallucination only seen by Christian Slater that basically tells him to go kill the Alabama's former pimp. Things rapidly get crazier after that culminating in one of the strangest shootout scenes I've ever seen.

It's hard to analyze Kilmer's performance here. He keeps an accent and everything but you never see more of his face than his snarled lip. I guess it's a pretty good Elvis. Good enough for a hallucination anyway. Part of me thinks it would be pretty great to have Val Kilmer appear as Elvis in a hallucination where he tells me things to help me morally justify poor decisions.

What I found surprising about "True Romance" was the huge number of actors who are still considered big movie stars in 2009. Brad Pitt, Samuel L. Jackson, Christopher Walken, James Gandolfini, and to a lesser extent Gary Oldman, Tom Sizemore (very much pre-meltdown), Dennis Hopper, Patricia Arquette and Michael Rapaport are all in this movie to some degree. Still, it's a sign of the draw that Val Kilmer had in 1993 that his EXTREMELY limited role in this received almost top billing in the credits.

The Real McCoy (1993)

I've decided to add a new category to The Kilmer Project's labels: Supporting Role. In this 1992 Kim Bassinger movie, our boy Val does not get a lot of screen time so pardon my lack of enthusiasm in this post.

Even though this movie was released in the mid-90s, everything about it has the look and feel of a 1980s crime drama starting with the neon Miami Vice-ish font that introduces the movie. The movie opens in the midst of an elaborate one man bank heist. Suddenly something goes wrong and the alarm is going off. The masked robber is trying to escape but gets caught. Flash forward a couple of years and this master thief is getting out of jail when we finally see his face... what?! It's not a man at all! This robber is a pretty lady!

So Kim Basinger (as Karen McCoy) gets out of the joint and has to try to make it on the outside. She bumps into Val Kilmer who is an incompetent thief but a big fan of her bank robbery work. Also, it's pretty obvious that he's got the hots for her. There's some drama with her not seeing her kid, a sinister criminal who kidnaps this kid in order to convince her to rob an incredibly secure bank, the impossibility of pulling this off, but maybe just maybe, and... you can see where this is going. It's not a very good movie.

The only thing I really want to comment on about this movie is that it's set in Atlanta but there's absolutely no reason it should be set in Atlanta. Atlanta's a sprawling, boring, and nondescript town. This story could be set anywhere, so why pick the one large city where these actors (none southerners) have to fake a southern accent?! They're terrible at it. Don't get me wrong, I'm no accent coach nor am I an expert on what people in Atlanta are supposed to sound like. But the cast is so inconsistent it's laughable. Kim Basinger can hardly finish a sentence without dropping her accent. The main bad guy is audibly British and doesn't really attempt to hide it. And Kilmer's weirdo "J.T. Barker" getaway driver character barely has enough lines for it to matter.

Keep movies out of Atlanta unless they have Outkast in them.

Thunderheart (1992)

"Thunderheart" finds Val Kilmer following his desert wandering Native American spirit in "The Doors" into a scarcely remembered early 1990s Indian reservation crime drama. In an exciting moment for any Washington, DC resident, the film begins by following Val Kilmer cruising around town in a red convertible. This trip takes him right past your author's office building and into the FBI headquarters where lazy failed presidential candidate, and moral dirtbag, Fred Thompson (my god those are fun to dig up!) gives our hero a new assignment. In a sadly plausible bit of identity politics shaping public policy, Fred Thompson decides that because agent Kilmer is like 1/4 Native American, he should be tasked with helping out in a cycle of violence taking place at the Sioux (Lakota presumably) Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

Kilmer jumps right into the action by helping his FBI-legend partner to track down a murder suspect. There's an unintentionally hilarious part of this chase scene where the FBI legend gets his hand gnawed by a strategically placed beaver. Kilmer plays "Ray Levoi" as an uptight asshole who's totally repressing his drunken Sioux father. Thanks to some interaction with a medicine man, Agent Levoi gets deep into his Sioux side. He has a hallucinatory "spirit walk" which plays a big role at the movie's climax. Surprisingly, Agent Levoi does not seem to be at all concerned about whether the sudden occurrence of waking hallucinations could possibly jeopardize his security clearance (which for those of us who have had them know is a totally burdensome process).

So anyway, tensions are running high between the Traditionalists who are trying to preserve their way of life and the government appointed tribal leader's goon squad. There's an inexplicable cameo by David Crosby as a bartender with one line (which has an incredibly incendiary racial slur). Seriously, there was no cause for that. Kilmer's character then starts showing the sort of outside the legal framework vigilantism for which he's most commonly known. He gets in some people's faces and uncovers a huge conspiracy. Then I think he loses his job. The End.

This movie was probably meant to soak up some of the shortly revived public fascination with Native Americans that was sweeping the country in the wake of 1990's "Dances With Wolves." Val Kilmer is partially Native American which probably played a big part in the decision to cast him for this role. Nonetheless, it's hard to find the idea of a fraction-blooded, city dwelling, career minded FBI agent being given even marginal credibility by the spiritual leadership of a tribe.