Val Kilmer’s lone scene in “Top Gun: Maverick” is strikingly powerful — not only because it successfully projects decades of close friendship between his character, Tom “Iceman” Kazansky, and Tom Cruise’s, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, but because it also draws on the actor’s own experiences. The combination lays fertile ground for a great, often unheralded performer to shine, if only for a moment.
In the 1986 original, Iceman was Maverick’s competition for the top spot in the Top Gun rankings — both were equally brash and testosterone-fueled young fighter pilots, but Iceman read from the standard playbook and Maverick, to put it kindly, had problems with authority. By the end of that film, the two had been bonded by combat, relying on each other to survive. “Maverick,” set about 35 years later, finds Cruise’s character largely the same — still disobeying orders, still buzzing towers — if calmed and weathered a bit, and struggling with his failure as a surrogate father to his late best friend’s son. It also finds Mav and Ice 35 years into what has turned out to be a very deep and brotherly friendship, with now-Adm. Kazansky having saved still-Capt. Mitchell’s bacon many times. After much setup, viewers are finally treated to one scene (and only one) reuniting the two in the flesh.
Much of the scene’s poignancy, of course, comes from the fact that Kilmer, the handsome golden boy of ‘80s cinema and critically hailed chameleon of the ‘90s and beyond, was struck by throat cancer in the 2010s. Chemotherapy and multiple tracheostomies have the actor with a struggling rasp for a voice, an ordeal he describes in his autobiography, “I’m Your Huckleberry: A Memoir,” and in the Amazon documentary “Val,” which contains stunning behind-the-scenes footage of much of his career, shot by the actor himself.
