The Salton Sea (2002)

Val Kilmer seems to have taken about a year and a half off of movie making. Presumably, he spent that time traveling back from Mars. In his next feature, a skillfully presented film noir, he plays a mohawked speed freak named Danny Boyle. I'm not going to do a spoiler alert for this movie because it's actually really good and I would recommend seeing it. Suffice to say that Kilmer's character wasn't born looking like this:
He had an awful experience on a trip with his young wife to the Salton Sea. See, he used to be a jazz musician. A whiteboy trumpet player of some talent. Then fate handed him a shitty hand and he's been sulking about it and taking a bunch of meth ever since. He's also narcing on dealers to a couple of rough cops. Looks like he's in a pretty bad downward spiral of self destruction... or is he? This movie does a pretty a good job of handling some modern takes of the film noir style. Yes it opens near what you will eventually see to be just about the end, but he's more of the detective as a drug addict than the detectives he's working with. It's a good turn in what has otherwise been a string of missed chances for our boy Val.