R.I.P. Val Kilmer (and Tombstone’s Doc Holliday)

Sometimes it seems that ValKilmer made a specialty of portraying men who die young. At least, that’s theimpression I got after watching his electrifying performances as Jim Morrisonin The Doors (1991) and as a tubercular Doc Holliday in Tombstone (1992).Still, Kilmer remained very much alive as the warrior Madmartigan in GeorgeLucas and Ron Howard’s fantasy epic Willow (1988), in which he wasupstaged by tiny Warwick Davis but also chanced to meet his real-lifewife-to-be, Joanne Whalley. (They fell for one another on the set, and Howardobligingly re-shot their love scenes to take advantage of the budding romance.Fairytales do tend to come to an end, however. Though they wed in 1988 and hadtwo children together, the couple divorced in 1996.)

 Kilmer’s “Iceman” characterin Top Gun (1986) was also a survivor, living long enough to show up inthe film’s decades-later sequel, Top Gun: Maverick. Still, when thesequel was shot in 2022, Kilmer’s voice was so affected by treatments forthroat cancer that it had to be digitally altered to add clarity. Sadly, TopGun: Maverick was Kilmer’s final performance. He died on April 1, 2025: atsixty-five he was by no means a youngster, but many of us had hoped foradditional cinematic brilliance from him.   

 Tombstone, at its essence, is essentially the story of twogangs—a group of local Arizona lawmen (three of them brothers) versus a looselyorganized cluster of cattle rustlers and horse thieves who called themselvesthe Cowboys. At the infamous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, several men on bothsides went down. The thirty-second shootout was followed up by laterskirmishes, in which much blood was shed on both sides. Various versions of thestory—which became widely known only after Earp’s death and a popular bookabout him—show up in a number of films, starting with 1939’s FrontierMarshal, which starred Randolph Scott and Cesar Romero. Then there was JohnFord’s 1945 My Darling Clementine followed by the 1957 Gunfight atthe O.K. Corral, which starred Burt Lancaster as Wyatt Earp and KirkDouglas as his buddy, Doc Holliday.

 I suspect that Tombstone,directed by George P. Cosmatos, was intended to be the lastword on the subject. Certainly, its cast is chockful of famous names.  It seems as though every red-blooded male inHollywood wanted to take part in this semi-true tale of law-and-order on theAmerican frontier. In addition to Kilmer and top-billed Kurt Russell (asreluctant lawman Wyatt Earp), the film features such established names asPowers Boothe, Sam Elliott, Bill Paxton, Jason Priestley, Thomas Haden Church,and Billy Zane. Dana Delany of China Beach fame is the female lead in a moviethat is predictably short on women’s roles. (Yes, she plays  a gal with a checkered sexual history.)Ageing Charlton Heston , not long before his 2002 retirement from acting, takeson a small but key part in the proceedings, and none other than Robert Mitchumserves as the film’s narrator.

 Though Tombstone pitslawmen against renegades, the story is such that it’s often hard to tell themapart. Earp and Holliday seem at times no less bloodthirsty than the Cowboys.This puts me in mind of the response, back in 1967, to Arthur Penn’s Bonnieand Clyde, decried then by many for its level of on-screen violence. Asfilm scholar Robert Alan Kolker put it, “Penn showed the way: Bonnie and Clyde opened the bloodgates, and our cinema has barely stoppedbleeding since.”   Now Bonnie andClyde seems rather tame. Today, there will be blood.