Entering filmmakers Leo Scott and Ting Poo‘s “Val,” one is best suited not knowing what has happened to actor Val Kilmer. Case in point: When Kilmer’s sheer physical deterioration was revealed on-screen, you could hear the audience at my screening gasping. They had no clue. I knew about Kilmer’s tragic plight due to the 2020 NYT piece “What Happened to Val Kilmer?” which laid out the actor’s brutal bout with lung cancer and the chemotherapy that destroyed his ability to speak. A tracheotomy has now forced him to press on a hole in his jugular to let out a screechy babble of worded sentences. The thick of the footage in “Val” is Kilmer’s own. The actor had a camera on-hand at almost every crucial point in his acting life; from his Julliard days in the early ‘80s to his cancer diagnosis in the late Aughts. It makes for a well-edited affair, albeit one that feels dishonestly captured, despite the initimacy of the footage. Poo/Scott spent over nine months digitizing the 16mm home movies . You can tell they are trying to mold an image of the actor here. [C+]
Street Address
City, State, Zip
Phone Number
Featured
