BWD – Bruce Willis

A look at the Best, the Worst, and the most Different (for better or worse) of the enduringly iconic action veteran’s resume.

Best

Die Hard (1988)

Much has been written about Bruce’s breakthrough role, of course.  All I’ll add here is that if Russell Crowe – talented as he is, don’t get me wrong – can win an Oscar for Gladiator, an action movie with sandals, then Bruce should have at least been nominated for his towering work in the Nakatomi tower.

Pulp Fiction (1994)

Though it now reads like a who’s who of ‘90s casting (Stoltz, Roth, Rhames, Plummer, Arquette) and was the breakthrough for legend-in-waiting Samuel L. Jackson, the best piece of casting in Tarantino’s sophomore effort was our Bruce.  Comeback-wise, Travolta had to rise above worse (four words: Look Who’s Talking Now), but Willis had suffered a dip in popularity – via bombs like The Bonfire of the Vanities, Striking Distance and Hudson Hawk – that threatened to crash his movie star credibility when it was just taking flight.  As Butch Coolridge, Bruce is tough, wounded, sardonic and sensitive (the unexpectedly tender bedroom scene with Maria de Mederios) in turn, but it’s towards the end of ‘The Gold Watch’ vignette that a star is re-born. 

Having escaped from his gimp-suited guard, Butch has his hand on the front door knob, but hesitates.  In a moment of clarity, he realises that even though Marcelles Wallace was shooting at him earlier that morning, he is his brother in arms, and Butch can’t take his own freedom without going back for his comrade.  So he goes through his weapon options, and picks an antique samurai sword, giving the screen an image of bloody and beaten one-man redemption to rival any of John McClain’s best moments.  Welcome back, Bruce.

 

Twelve Monkeys (1995)

I remember reading an interview Willis did for Pulp Fiction where he said that he was sick of running around holding a gun, and wanted to stretch himself further as an actor.  Whilst subsequent releases like The Fifth Element, The Jackal, Tears of The Sun and Hostage (not to mention Last Man Standing, 16 Blocks, Die Hard 4.0, R.E.D, G.I. Joe: Retaliation…) have rendered this declaration void, he did go through a late ‘90s hands-free period that produced his strongest performances.  His turn as time traveller James Cole sees him vulnerable, confused and alone, and brought a depth of performance that had barely been hinted at before.  Brad Pitt’s showier turn got a Best Supporting Actor nom, whereas Bruce was typically, and unfairly, overlooked.

The Sixth Sense (1999)

Willis has always been good with child actors.  Sandwiched between his kiddie-centric roles in Mercury Rising and M. Night Shyamalan’s follow-up Unbreakable, Sixth Sense is Bruce’s best screen performance.  Quiet, mournful and with neigh a smirk in sight, it’s a testament to how he commands our attention that he stops the viewer from noticing what, on reflection, was a pretty sign-posted twist.  The gimmick value of the movie’s ending, as well as all the focus on man child-child Haley Joel Osment, meant that Bruce’s good work went largely unnoticed.       

Sin City (2005)

Frank Miller called Willis ‘his generation’s Humphrey Bogart’, and it’s hard to disagree.  Few other actors could have brought the same mixture of toughness and vulnerability to the role of betrayed and beleaguered cop John Hartigan, who has to be equally comfortable stomping a yellow paedo-freak’s face into the ground as struggling with polemic fatherly and erotic urges towards a suddenly developed Jessica Alba.  As in Pulp, Bruce stands out from a star-studded cast.

Worst

Hudson Hawk (1991)

Vanity projects are never a good thing:  they reek of smug self-indulgence and you always feel that they were having a lot more fun making the thing than you are watching it.  Hudson Hawk is one of the very worst, a charmless romp that resembles a hyperactive toddler as it runs all over the place, producing a lot of noise, making very little sense and exhausting all that keep its company.

Color of Night (1994)

Ever fancied seeing Bruce Willis’s penis?  Here’s your chance, as it makes a cameo appearance flopping about in the swimming pool during one of many tedious sex scenes with Jane Marsh in this woeful erotic thriller. Taking over a therapy group from murdered buddy Scott ‘Quantum Leap’ Bukula, psychiatrist Bruce has to figure who from a troubled line-up including the likes of Brad Dourif, Lance Henriksen, Lesley Ann Warren and Marsh in drag is really a killer.  Silly doesn’t begin to cover it.

Different

Death Becomes Her (1992)

Willis ditched his macho image just as he was cultivating it to go against the grain as wimpy plastic surgeon Ernest Menville, who spends the whole movie being manipulated by ageing divas Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep.  Willis lets the clown he had so far kept mostly within run free – if you can ignore Hudson Hawk, which is advisable – gurning his way through Robert Zemekis’ dated but fun screwball romp. One thing you can say about the man is that even this early in his career, only four years after Die Hard, he wasn’t afraid to send himself up.