OK, I am not personally sure that Val Kilmer is a jerk, but John Frankenheimer, who directed him in The Island of Dr. Moreau, said about him: "...I will never work with Val Kilmer again. There isn't enough money in the world." He also said: "Will Rogers never met Val Kilmer." No doubt this refers to Rogers saying he never met a man he didn't like. A giant studio and a good director can minimize the effect of a prima donna narcissist on the movie itself. But when Val runs the show you get a mess like this. Don't think this was some artistic genius film ruined by the distributors. Val did with this what he probably tried to do with Island... make the entire movie all about Val with Val in every scene. Like a giant TJ Hooker episode, where Shatner could dictate that he appear in 90% of the scenes. Great narcissists make crappy movies. That's why the studio tried to add action scenes as the last resort, to save this mess. You can see the original movie in there-- and it sucks even worse than the action re-cut. So don't expect another Tombstone, this is either going to be boring drama drivel or incoherent action drivel, depending on which cut you see. Like all truly dreadful movies, it is fractal. The badness scales from the grandest story arc to the tiniest detail and everything in between. Everybody was phoning in their performance, no pun intended to the story line. You can almost hear them grinding their teeth waiting to get this turkey over with, and that is everyone from the director to the sound-man to the janitor to the intern getting the donuts.
Review of Columbus Day
