Bruce Willis is one of the greatest movie stars of his generation. Unfortunately, he has had to retire for medical reasons. We still celebrate every one of his movies and acting performances, as he was an action hero, but always knew how to be in on the joke, creating sympathetic and exciting characters. Here are his most essential moments in movies, ranked
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8 Bruce Willis Plays Himself - Ocean’s Twelve (2004)
Warner Bros.
In Ocean’s Twelve, Willis plays himself, and unintentionally becomes part of the gang’s plot to steal a Fabergé Imperial Coronation Egg. The scene where Julia Roberts is playing Tess, trying to pass as actress Julia Roberts, is farcical excellence, but once Willis appears, everything goes into overdrive, and things get even better. Roberts has an incredible performance when he sees him, as any big fan would, and their chemistry as real-life friends is proven. Willis was rumored to be on the casting list for Danny Ocean in Ocean’s Eleven, so the fact that he accepted the role of playing himself here, is even better. This wasn’t his first cameo as himself, as he also did it in The Player, Nancy Drew, and The Lego Movie 2: Second Part, but this is his best.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
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MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
7 Harry’s Goodbye - Armageddon (1998)
Buena Vista Pictures
Michael Bay’s movies might not be the ones where we think of great dramatic moments, but Armageddon was different. When an asteroid is coming to destroy Earth, a group of oil drillers is asked to go to the rock and destroy it from the inside; the leader of that team is none other than Harry Stamper (Willis). The movie might have many action scenes and some strange logic (wouldn’t it be easier to train astronauts to drill?), but it also has one of Bruce Willis’ best acting moments ever.
Harry has been the toughest of them all throughout the entire movie, but when someone must stay behind to detonate the nuclear bomb, and it’s A.J. (Ben Affleck) who takes the shortest straw, Willis’ character decides to sacrifice himself so that A.J. and Harry’s daughter Grace (Liv Tyler), can have a future together. The goodbye scene with Affleck proves why Willis is a movie star; he might be tough, but he also has emotions and is not afraid to show them, giving his character humanity, love, and hope, with a few words and some glances, making it one of the most chill-inducing and emotional endings in any of Bay’s films.
6 “I’m deputizing the little guy.” - Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
Focus Features
Wes Anderson is not the kind of director you think would work wonders with Willis, as their styles are worlds apart, but Moonrise Kingdom proved us all different. This film might be Willis’ last great role, as he plays small-town police captain, Duffy Sharp. When two young loves, Sam (Jared Gilman) and Suzy (Kara Hayward), disappear, it is up to him to find them. This is one of Wes Anderson’s best movies, and the closest he’ll ever get to having a tough guy character in one of his films. Willis has a sense of humor in playing this idiosyncratic, small-town character. Shown perfectly in the scene where he gives a speech many police detectives could say, while talking to a group of kid scouts, he gave it the needed authority and seriousness, even though the situation is pretty surreal.
5 “Touch me again, and I’ll kill you.” - The Last Boy Scout (1991)
The Last Boy Scout is a pure ’90s movie, written by famous screenwriter Shane Black, and directed by none other than Tony Scott. This buddy cop action movie, led by Bruce Willis and Damon Wayans, uses violence and jokey dialogue in spades. Willis’ Joe Hallenbeck might be a descendant of his John McClane, but there are differences between both characters, as Joe is much more depressed (and depressing). The scene in question proves how much disregard for human life this character has, and how he follows through on his promises, creating a tough guy that, although might look and sound like the Die Hard hero, has nothing to do with him, while also being just as lethal.
4 The Pool Scene - Unbreakable (2000)
Touchstone Pictures
This might be M. Night Shyamalan’s best film, and is obviously with Bruce Willis, as the director always knew how to extract the actor’s best performances. In Unbreakable, Willis plays David Dunn, a man who, after a train accident, discovers he might have powers. While he starts understanding their limits, and how he can help people, his relationship with both his wife, and especially his kid, improves. As with every powered man, he has an evil rival (Samuel L. Jackson) and his kryptonite, in this case, water. That’s why the pool scene is so important, as it shows Willis’ character’s vulnerability and horror, and the actor plays it perfectly.
3 “I didn’t leave you.” - Sixth Sense (1999)
Hollywood Pictures/Spyglass Entertainment
Willis and Shyamalan’s first movie together still has one of the best twist endings ever. The Sixth Sense was both a critical and box office success, showing a different part of Willis’ acting. Here, he’s no tough guy, just a child psychologist trying to help a boy with supernatural powers. Willis shows a softer, subtler, and regretful side. The movie twist wouldn’t work without Willis’ incredible performance, as he understands what’s really happening and sells the confusion, realization, and sadness of the reveal, reinventing himself as an actor in the process.
About Willis’ performance, Shyamalan told The Hollywood Reporter: “I think he is very present to her in those scenes,” she remembers. “But my belief is that the only way to play it was to play it as a scene with him in it. The main thing was not to let my subtext show — not to play that he was dead, but to play as if he were there.”
2 Butch Chooses the Samurai Sword - Pulp Fiction (1994)
Miramax
Pulp Fiction is still Quentin Tarantino’s masterpiece, and one of the best action movies of the ’90s. Willis plays one of the three leads; Butch, a boxer, who, after accepting a bribe from Marcellus Wallace (Ving Rhames), bets for himself and wins a lot of money. As the movie continues, Wallace finds him, and they fight, ending up in a pawnshop, whose owner has nefarious plans for them. Once Butch escapes from the “gimp”, he decides to go back and save Wallace, the man whose been trying to kill him. Although the scene is silent, you can see in Willis’ eyes everything he’s thinking, and how when he sees the samurai sword, it’s obvious this is going to be his weapon of choice, and that Zed and his pals are as good as dead.
In the podcast 2 Bears, 1 Cave with Tom Segura, Tarantino revealed how he cast Willis with a conversation: “I would ask, you’ve had your mind set on other characters. I would just ask you to read the script one more time with the idea of you playing Butch. And if you don’t respond. But I would just ask you to read it with the other characters out of your head and that character in your mind. And if you don’t respond, you don’t respond.’ (…) And so he did that, and then he called me the next day. And he said ‘Quentin. The shortest sentence in the bible is, ‘Jesus wept.’ The shortest sentence in Hollywood is ‘I’m in. And I’m in.’”
1 Yippee-Ki-Yay Motherfu**er - Die Hard (1988)
20th Century Studios
Bruce Willis will always be John McClane. That’s what everyone will remember him for, and it all started with a little movie called Die Hard. Willis was the perfect actor to imbue the everyman qualities of this New York police officer in well over his head, who gets tired, bleeds, and only wants to rescue his wife after a marital spat that was his fault. One of the most quoted movie moments is “Yippee-Ki-Yay Motherfu**er”, said in every Die Hard film, and that is first uttered when McClane is talking with Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman), and his swagger and charisma are in full force, as he has already killed some of the terrorists, and is starting to believe in his odds, sharing quips with the evil mastermind villain. This film and this moment proved Willis could be a movie star, and he got that opportunity and used it for almost three decades, creating incredible moments in movies.
