The Doors

When the world lost Val Kilmer last week, I wanted to go back and revisit one of his best performances in THE DOORS.

Kilmer is mind blowing as Jim Morrison, the hot orange center of Oliver Stone's trippy, challenging film. I'm a huge Stone fan. At his best, in films like "Born on the Fourth of July" and my favorite Stone film, "JFK", he brings a one of a kind, visual, dense storytelling to the big screen.

The film begins with Jim's earliest days as a child, crowded in the back seat of his parents car, an observer to a car accident that has left several bodies on the pavement. Is this an accurate memory? It is a New Mexico mirage, blurred by a drug induced haze?

Stone shoots the entire film is an ever changing array of visual styles, swooping in post credits on Kilmer as Morrison, a free wheeling hippie poet/filmmaker. His film project attracts three other students in sync with his vision for changing the world.

The four of them will soon form a new band called The Doors.

Ray Manzarek (Kyle MacLachlan) is the brainy, solid businessman of the group. John Densmore is played by Kevin Dillon (Platoon), who trained with the real Densmore on the drums for many months to achieve those live performances.

Frank Whaley (Pulp Fiction) plays bassist Robbie Krieger, whose attempts to remain semi-sober grow increasingly questionable sharing a stage with Jim.

Stone and his production designer Barbara Ling (who would create Los Angeles of the 1960's again for Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood") immerse the viewer in the Sunset Strip, Whiskey A G-Go and San Francisco during the turbulent late 60's. The night club performances are jaw dropping and Kilmer performed the concert scenes live, channeling Morrison through every leather clad, love bead adorned pore.

The final sound is a clever mix of Kilmer and Morrison and it's seamless. The real band members said that Kilmer did such an amazing job, they can't tell which track is Jim's and which is Val's.

The first half of the film is an exciting history of the band's formation and their early success. Seeing Kilmer sing "The End" and "Light My Fire" is a thrill and Stone delivers each scene like a historian who treasures the era.

The entire sequence detailing The Doors first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show is fantastic. It's Morrison's first LOUD statement as a social rebel and it's hilarious. The set design and period detail is flawless.

Stone pulls you into a psychedelic journey. Meg Ryan is winning as Jim's eventual wife Pamela. She's the girl next door...on acid.

Michael Wincott (Nope) is a powerhouse as Paul Rothchild and Crispin Glover is perfectly weird as Andy Warhol.

When the film reaches about the halfway point of its 140 minute running time, it begins to slip into a funk. As Morrison's life spirals, the film does too. It's not Stone's fault, he's accurately capturing a tortured man.

But how long can you watch a talented soul alienate everyone around him, do drugs to the point of oblivion, fall in with a satanic woman (Kathleen Quinlan in a career best, sexually voracious, no-holds-barred performance) and Jim pissing off (and on) his band mates?

Morrison's behavior becomes so obnoxious you start to feel sorry for the band and their promoters...and fans...and club owners..... MacLachlan and Whaley are great in the scenes where they know they are losing their friend.

Once again, music saves the film, as "Back Door Man" and "Riders on the Storm" emerge off their final album. As Morrison prepares to head for Paris, he listens to the final album with the group and says, "sounds pretty good for four guys that weren't speaking to each other.."

Only 27 when he died, Morrison is another tragic figure that burned out far too young. Even as the back half of the film turns from sheer entertainment to an endurance test for the audience, Kilmer holds court, oozing every desperate, cocky, self assured and terrified bit of Morrison's tortured being.

This is spectacular movie making on every level.

Kilmer and Stone dare you to look away as Morrison dances aimlessly over the edge, time after time.

THE DOORS swirls around you in a druggy haze, sliding its way in and out of coherency to an appreciative A-.

"I believe in a long prolonged derangement of the senses to attain the unknown... Although I live in the subconscious, our pale reason hides the infinite from us." - Jim Morrison