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When I wrote a tribute to my favourite comedy Top Secret! earlier this year — after the death of director/writer Jim Abrahams — I really didn’t imagine I’d be revisiting it so soon. However, the untimely demise of the film’s star, Val Kilmer, on Tuesday, has me thinking about it all over again.
Killmer, who died of pneumonia at age 65, had many memorable roles during his somewhat tumultuous career: a tubercular, alcoholic Doc Holliday in Tombstone; a cocky, over-gelled fighter pilot in Top Gun; a right-hand man to Robert De Niro’s career criminal in Heat.
Val Kilmer died Tuesday night in Los Angeles. He was 65. (Mark Humphrey / The Associated Press files)
But I always preferred his comedic turns — the titular genius in teen sci-fi goof Real Genius; disgraced knight Madmartigan in the fantasy-action film Willow (stream it on Prime) and sarcastic PI Gay Perry in the L.A. noir Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (available on Crave), where he’s a cool foil to the jittery energy of Robert Downey Jr. (“If you need anything, hesitate to call,” he deadpans.)
Top Secret! was his breakout role, playing Nick Rivers, a heartthrob ‘50s rock ‘n’ roll singer who somehow gets pulled into a mashup of Elvis movies, Second World War spy tropes and general lunacy.
What sells his performance — beyond his chiselled jaw, vocal chops (the future portrayer of Jim Morrison sang all his own songs in the film), and swivel-hipped gyrations (I implore you to check out this clip) — is his total commitment to the bit.
Top Secret! Is one of the most ridiculous films ever made, but his straight-faced delivery is what keeps things from going off the rails. There are some fourth-wall-breaking winks at the camera, but those aside, it’s never that Kilmer is in on the joke, it’s that there is no joke.
Whether he’s having a brawl in an underwater saloon or meeting a member of the French Resistance called Chocolate Mousse, he’s fully invested in being Nick Rivers, performing with utter sincerity the song How Silly Can You Get? for a room of screaming teen girls and then Evel Knieveling his way across the countryside on a motorbike.
Writing at RogerEbert.com, Scout Tafoya said: “It was just a comedy, but no one was going to tell Val Kilmer that he was just anything.”
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Kilmer was, by all accounts (even his own), a difficult man to work with (here are some hilarious examples of him smack-talking director David Mamet on the Spartan DVD commentary).
A lot of the conflicts he had with directors and co-stars stemmed from his unwillingness to compromise, his dedication to Method acting and his insistence that no one ever settle.
He was an anarchic presence who demanded total control. But while his personal legacy might be problematic, the results of his diligence speak — and sing — for themselves.
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