The hosts of the Hit Factory Podcast, Aaron Casias and Carlee Gomes, join us from San Francisco to discuss two Val Kilmer films.

Made as David Mamet was getting redpilled post-9/11, his bizarre 2004 thriller Spartan has a stripped-down screenplay comprised mostly of jargon and commands and features a terrific performance from Kilmer as an army ranger sent to rescue a high-value target (the President’s daughter) kidnapped by sex traffickers (a scenario that has new meaning in our modern political age).

The new documentary Val is assembled from hundreds of hours of video captured by Kilmer over the course of his life, and although there is much candor to the film in terms of how Kilmer has been living with loss, certain notorious aspects of his life are downplayed: Kilmer’s well-earned, career-long reputation as “difficult” for example. Val is available on Amazon Prime.

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Trailer for Spartan (David Mamet, 2004)

Trailer for Val (Leo Scott, Ting Poo, 2021)