Kilmer's Best

Rating: Null/10 (19 September 2001)

Great film, one of Val kilmer's best performances. This film gives a great beginning look at Jim Morrison, a very gifted poet who was caught up in a bad era of sex and drugs, which dragged him down to the point of death.
As a biography film, this movie cuts it. Oliver Stone, while managing to highlight major events in the life of the band, he focuses mostly on the scandal that surrounded Jim Morrison. He depicts Morrison as a boozing, out of control psychopath who is on a self destructive mission, and looking to take someone with him.
Well folks, the Real Jim Morrison was NOT like that.
Okay, honestly, Jim had his moments where things got crazy, but they happened very few and far between, and it seemed to me that Stone comprised these moments, put them back to back, and called it a movie. A lot of the facts of Jim's life weren't included, some were stretched, and others never happened. For instance, in the scene where Jim and party were flying to Miami for the infamous concert, Jim is heard asking Paul Rothchild to get him some heroin. Well, Jim never did heroin...it was the one drug he never touched, because he lost some friends to it. The irony to that is it was Pam's drug of choice, which provoked many fights.
What I felt was missing from the movie were bit showing the other side of Jim, which would show him as a gentleman, and a calm collected individual when he was away from substances. As a celebrity, Jim loved his fans, and cared for them...it was the overwhelming attention from the masses that he didn't care for, and it was why he tried to escape.
Overall, the film does a great job depicting the world that the Doors were a part of, showing the turbulence of the 60's, and it also is a great introduction to the Doors, and to Jim Morrison. This is the movie that got me listening to the Doors, and it peaked my interest. Though I wish that Jim was shown in a better light, it is definitely worth watching over and over.