Based on an H.G. Wells story, "The Island of Dr. Moreau" is generally not remembered fondly. In fact, my Netflix account thought that a viewer like me would give it a damning 1.7 star (out of 5.0) review. In truth, I enjoyed the movie immensely. It's dark and admiittedly kind of ridiculous, but it approaches some really interesting themes regarding bio-ethics and human nature.
The story begins with David Thewlis's (who is in Harry Potter but is not Snape!) character stranded in the ocean after having killed his two fellow survivors in a desperate act of self preservation. His raft is rescued by an Indonesian ship aboard which, for unknown reasons, Val Kilmer's character Montgomery is traveling. Kilmer persuades Thewlis to come visit the island where he works. Dr. Moreau (Marlon Brando at the height of his meltdown - overweight, barely audible, and strange strange strange) is the mad scientist who owns the island. It takes Thewlis's character all of one night to find out that there's really fucked up tests being performed which mix animal and human DNA with grotesque results. All manner of deformed freaky animal-human hybrids, or manimals if you will, are living a primative but separate life on the island... and strangely vegetarian? Some of these manimals are Brando's own "children" including the especially human looking Fairuza Balk (of American History X and Waterboy fame). Thewlis for some reason wants to run afoul of God's design by having some weird feelings of attraction for this feline human cross breed. The island's manimal population is kept in check by a high pitched buzzer that Brando's character has implanted in all of the manimals. For better or worse, "The Island of Dr. Moreau" gave the world the inspiration for the Austin Powers character mini-me by featuring a piano playing tiny version of Marlon Brando played by this guy:
Things quickly melt down when one of the manimals rips out his implant. There's kind of a manimal revolution and almost everyone dies. The end. Oh yeah, Val Kilmer says "when I die I want to go to dog heaven" and he does an actually pretty decent Marlon Brando impression which seems like a bit of overkill even a movie as over the top as this one.
If nothing else, "The Island of Dr. Moreau" served as a one-two punch with "Batman Forever" to knock Val Kilmer right out of Hollywood super-stardom. Although Kilmer has a huge filmography extending well beyond Dr. Moreau, he has never managed to regain the same starpower that he possessed in the mid 1990s. These two critical failures in a row coincided with Kilmer's divorce from Joanne Whaley (which he learned of from a news broadcast during the filming of Dr. Moreau!).
May 3, 2009
April 22, 2009
Heat (1995)
Michael Mann's 1995 cop and robber drama "Heat" tells the heartwarming story of a group of friends who had a dream. That dream was to pull off massive robberies.
I've always been kind of partial to Michael Mann's crime stories. Consider some of these titles: "Miami Vice," "The Insider," "Collateral," and upcoming John Dillinger movie "Public Enemies." He certainly tells a good cop and robber story where both the traditional good guy and bad guy characters are presented as being ethically compromised. "Heat" was the movie that really launched his career and that concept is definitely at play here.
One of the most exciting aspects of "Heat" was that for the first time ever, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino would be sharing the screen in the same movie. Granted, De Niro and Al Pacino were both in Godfather II, but because of the different stories being told set in different times they never were on screen at the same time. Also, don't make the common mistake of thinking that they were both in "Goodfellas," because that of course, is Joe Pesci, not Al Pacino that plays the loose cannon sidekick. So for the first time sharing a screen together are two Hollywood megastars made famous for their roles as gangsters. Take a look at the poster, you know there's going to be some high pressure acting going on between them right?:
I've always been kind of partial to Michael Mann's crime stories. Consider some of these titles: "Miami Vice," "The Insider," "Collateral," and upcoming John Dillinger movie "Public Enemies." He certainly tells a good cop and robber story where both the traditional good guy and bad guy characters are presented as being ethically compromised. "Heat" was the movie that really launched his career and that concept is definitely at play here.
One of the most exciting aspects of "Heat" was that for the first time ever, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino would be sharing the screen in the same movie. Granted, De Niro and Al Pacino were both in Godfather II, but because of the different stories being told set in different times they never were on screen at the same time. Also, don't make the common mistake of thinking that they were both in "Goodfellas," because that of course, is Joe Pesci, not Al Pacino that plays the loose cannon sidekick. So for the first time sharing a screen together are two Hollywood megastars made famous for their roles as gangsters. Take a look at the poster, you know there's going to be some high pressure acting going on between them right?:
Well... un pocito. Since Al Pacino plays a cop and Robert De Niro plays a bank robber, they only cross paths in two scenes. Even more frustrating for the viewer who is consciously aware of how exciting it is to have these two in the same movie, the director seems to have made a concerted effort to not have both of their faces in the same shot at any point during the movie. This leads to a disproportionate use of over the shoulder shots during the few scenes that their characters share. The scene in a diner is pretty cool though.
Val Kilmer plays De Niro's sidekick, a character named Chris Shiherlis. He's a family man with an unseemly long blond ponytail. He's also got some intense gambling debts which kind of force his hand into taking part in some increasingly brazen bank robberies even though the wifey is clearly sick of this life and trying to leave him. Even though he's one of four characters in the sort of inner circle of criminals, you can easily tell the De Niro likes him better than Tom Sizemore or that terrifying Mexican guy (whose so scary that the character is named after the actor!).
April 4, 2009
Batman Forever (1995)
Where to begin... If your average man on the street were asked to name one movie starring Val Kilmer, they would almost all say Batman Forever. He is universally remembered for his leading role as Batman. It is likely to be listed someday in his obiturary. Unfortunately, it is one of the absolute worst movies made in the 1990s.
I'm a little worried about how to approach this post because it's hard to explain the many places where this movie went wrong. There's no fatal coup d'grace here - this is a movie that dies a slow death from a thousand little cuts. I would like to think that Kilmer was unaware of the shitshow in which he was participating. I'd like to think that he was a serious actor who tried to bring a unique voice to a brooding and complex character. As anyone whose seen "The Dark Knight" can attest, when properly executed, Batman can be one of the most engaging characters of the superhero universe. According to no higher source than Kilmer's IMDB trivia page, he had a terrible working relationship with Joel Schumaker but enjoyed playing Batman. I think the conventional wisdom has it that Joel Schumaker is the man responsible for this godawful mess of a movie. He was given a chance for vindication but somehow made an even worse follow up with 1997's Batman and Robin. His IMDB page reads as a sad list of regretted wastes of time and uninviting avoidable flops. The end result of Batman Forever is a series of poorly thought out characters that don't really connect with each other and a story that just has so many weird implausible and obvious ommissions of rational thought that it's more puzzling than any of Jim Carrey's riddles.
I'll give you an example. Bruce Wayne is touring his factory when he spies the Bat-signal on the night sky (the lighting and full staff would suggest it's daytime). He quickly takes his leave of the factory tour (which, we're given the impression that he almost never visits this facility at all) and goes to his office which is apparently in this same unfrequented building. He goes to his desk and presses a button and a hole in the floor opens up that feeds him (in a sort of casket) through a tunnel at speeds of 200 miles per hour down to the batcave. Now, leave aside for a moment the fact that someone other than Bruce Wayne or Alfred would have to have built high speed slide by covertly creating a pipe that travels to the rurual Wayne Manor. Wouldn't the cleaning staff notice a big fucking trap door under this guy's desk?
Nicole Kidman plays a forensic psychologist who, when she's not busy acting totally slutty to both Bruce Wayne and Batman, offers inaccurate psychological insights into the mind of Two Face. Thankfully, I screened this film with a Psychology PhD candidate who was able to point out Kidman's many errors. For example, Kidman quite quickly diagnoses Two Face as having "Obsessive Disorder with homocidal features." Now maybe it's splitting hairs to point out that this doesn't exist, but if the script for Batman Forever was anything more than Joel Schumaker scribbling notes on a bar napkin, they could have called an actual psychologist to at least make an attempt at writing in something that's not totally made up. There's no shortage of actual psychologists in Los Angeles. Also, another unexplainable moment occurs when Bruce Wayne goes to visit her office in City Hall. He hears aggravated female grunts and hitting sounds. When he breaks down the door he finds her in the middle of a punching bag workout... in the middle of the day... in an enormous office at City Hall. What kind of psychologist is she that she has a punching bag in the middle of her office? It's not explained, it's just out there.
Perhaps the most blatant error of this movie is that with two supervillains, they decided to give them not one original voice. Instead, both Jim Carrey as The Riddler, and Tommy Lee Jones as Two Face, play cackling evil maniacs in the same way that Jack Nicholson played the Joker in the first of the modern series of Batman movies.
Compare this (about a minute and a half in):
With this:
It's a goddamn travesty. This ruined everyone who touched it for quite a while. Jim Carrey's never FULLY rebounded, Tommy Lee Jones had Men In Black but otherwise... tsk tsk, and Val Kilmer began a slow strange decent into his present trajectory. Only Michael Keaton has suffered a worse Batman curse.
I'm a little worried about how to approach this post because it's hard to explain the many places where this movie went wrong. There's no fatal coup d'grace here - this is a movie that dies a slow death from a thousand little cuts. I would like to think that Kilmer was unaware of the shitshow in which he was participating. I'd like to think that he was a serious actor who tried to bring a unique voice to a brooding and complex character. As anyone whose seen "The Dark Knight" can attest, when properly executed, Batman can be one of the most engaging characters of the superhero universe. According to no higher source than Kilmer's IMDB trivia page, he had a terrible working relationship with Joel Schumaker but enjoyed playing Batman. I think the conventional wisdom has it that Joel Schumaker is the man responsible for this godawful mess of a movie. He was given a chance for vindication but somehow made an even worse follow up with 1997's Batman and Robin. His IMDB page reads as a sad list of regretted wastes of time and uninviting avoidable flops. The end result of Batman Forever is a series of poorly thought out characters that don't really connect with each other and a story that just has so many weird implausible and obvious ommissions of rational thought that it's more puzzling than any of Jim Carrey's riddles.
I'll give you an example. Bruce Wayne is touring his factory when he spies the Bat-signal on the night sky (the lighting and full staff would suggest it's daytime). He quickly takes his leave of the factory tour (which, we're given the impression that he almost never visits this facility at all) and goes to his office which is apparently in this same unfrequented building. He goes to his desk and presses a button and a hole in the floor opens up that feeds him (in a sort of casket) through a tunnel at speeds of 200 miles per hour down to the batcave. Now, leave aside for a moment the fact that someone other than Bruce Wayne or Alfred would have to have built high speed slide by covertly creating a pipe that travels to the rurual Wayne Manor. Wouldn't the cleaning staff notice a big fucking trap door under this guy's desk?
Nicole Kidman plays a forensic psychologist who, when she's not busy acting totally slutty to both Bruce Wayne and Batman, offers inaccurate psychological insights into the mind of Two Face. Thankfully, I screened this film with a Psychology PhD candidate who was able to point out Kidman's many errors. For example, Kidman quite quickly diagnoses Two Face as having "Obsessive Disorder with homocidal features." Now maybe it's splitting hairs to point out that this doesn't exist, but if the script for Batman Forever was anything more than Joel Schumaker scribbling notes on a bar napkin, they could have called an actual psychologist to at least make an attempt at writing in something that's not totally made up. There's no shortage of actual psychologists in Los Angeles. Also, another unexplainable moment occurs when Bruce Wayne goes to visit her office in City Hall. He hears aggravated female grunts and hitting sounds. When he breaks down the door he finds her in the middle of a punching bag workout... in the middle of the day... in an enormous office at City Hall. What kind of psychologist is she that she has a punching bag in the middle of her office? It's not explained, it's just out there.
Perhaps the most blatant error of this movie is that with two supervillains, they decided to give them not one original voice. Instead, both Jim Carrey as The Riddler, and Tommy Lee Jones as Two Face, play cackling evil maniacs in the same way that Jack Nicholson played the Joker in the first of the modern series of Batman movies.
Compare this (about a minute and a half in):
With this:
It's a goddamn travesty. This ruined everyone who touched it for quite a while. Jim Carrey's never FULLY rebounded, Tommy Lee Jones had Men In Black but otherwise... tsk tsk, and Val Kilmer began a slow strange decent into his present trajectory. Only Michael Keaton has suffered a worse Batman curse.
Tombstone (1993)
Tombstone represents another major uptick in Kilmer's popular success. He plays the wild west legend and dentist known as Doc Holliday. While most of the actual facts of Doc Holiday's life have been accentuated by old West legend, it is established that he was a drunk, a gambler, suffered from consumption (that's tuberculosis for the uninitiated) and took part in a massive revenge killing spree initiated by the Earp family.
The movie Tombstone tells the tale of the former old West lawmen of the Earp family (Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan) settling down with their wives in Tombstone, Arizona. The Earps plan on striking it rich by basically extorting a healthy share of the profits out of a local casino by using their reputations for western machismo to provide protection. Doc Holiday (Kilmer) rides into town with his prostitute looking girlfriend and proceeds to be sweaty and pale all the time and say mildly rude things to the gang of toughs known as "The Cowboys." He's basically a fading Southern dandy. This forces Holiday's old friend Wyatt Earp to take his back and puts everyone into confrontation with The Cowboys... who are known for wearing fancy red sashes around their waste like some sort of gringo matadors. Seriously, Kilmer has never looked paler or sweatier:
I had originally seen Tombstone quite a while ago and seemed to remember it as a story of pure good guys (The Earps) faced against pure evil (the Cowboys). It's really a very morally gray movie. The Earps are siphoning off their money from an casino/bar that they just ran into and demanded a share of the profits. Their vigilantism, allbeit well intentioned, essentially sets of reciprical violence between the two groups. And when one of the Earps gets killed... oops... spoiler alert- the murder spree that they conduct is just brutal. They set about hunting down these Cowboys in what is basically a "The Most Dangerous Game" type killing spree. Can nothing satiate Kirk Russell's mad bloodlust?!
The leader of the Cowboys, Curly Bill, is played by Powers Boothe (stage name? probably), who went on to play Cy Tolliver in the awesome Deadwood series on HBO:
Tombstone was a mega-hit that capped off a glut of mid 90s wild west movies. This was a huge win for Kilmer who continued his string of vigilante heroes soon after this with his most memorable (and possibly worst) role... Batman. As memorably said by Doc Holiday, "I have not yet begun to defile myself."
The movie Tombstone tells the tale of the former old West lawmen of the Earp family (Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan) settling down with their wives in Tombstone, Arizona. The Earps plan on striking it rich by basically extorting a healthy share of the profits out of a local casino by using their reputations for western machismo to provide protection. Doc Holiday (Kilmer) rides into town with his prostitute looking girlfriend and proceeds to be sweaty and pale all the time and say mildly rude things to the gang of toughs known as "The Cowboys." He's basically a fading Southern dandy. This forces Holiday's old friend Wyatt Earp to take his back and puts everyone into confrontation with The Cowboys... who are known for wearing fancy red sashes around their waste like some sort of gringo matadors. Seriously, Kilmer has never looked paler or sweatier:
I had originally seen Tombstone quite a while ago and seemed to remember it as a story of pure good guys (The Earps) faced against pure evil (the Cowboys). It's really a very morally gray movie. The Earps are siphoning off their money from an casino/bar that they just ran into and demanded a share of the profits. Their vigilantism, allbeit well intentioned, essentially sets of reciprical violence between the two groups. And when one of the Earps gets killed... oops... spoiler alert- the murder spree that they conduct is just brutal. They set about hunting down these Cowboys in what is basically a "The Most Dangerous Game" type killing spree. Can nothing satiate Kirk Russell's mad bloodlust?!
The leader of the Cowboys, Curly Bill, is played by Powers Boothe (stage name? probably), who went on to play Cy Tolliver in the awesome Deadwood series on HBO:
Tombstone was a mega-hit that capped off a glut of mid 90s wild west movies. This was a huge win for Kilmer who continued his string of vigilante heroes soon after this with his most memorable (and possibly worst) role... Batman. As memorably said by Doc Holiday, "I have not yet begun to defile myself."
March 30, 2009
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.
"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.
March 4, 2009
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.
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.
March 1, 2009
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.
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.
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