Commemorating Bruce Willis' career with his best roles

'Die Hard' trilogy ranks as his best movies

Kirk Boxleitner | Apr 14, 20220

Courtesy photo count

Bruce Willis in 'Die Hard' (1988).

On March 30, Bruce Willis' family announced his retirement from acting after he was diagnosed with aphasia, which impairs the ability to comprehend language and communicate. The Los Angeles Times reported that speculation about Willis' condition circulated through the film industry for years prior to his family's announcement.

Willis' receding hairline and solid jawline lent themselves to the many crimefighters, criminals and military men he played over the decades, while his stare could switch from flinty to playful in a heartbeat, and his boyish smirk often proved irrepressible.

Willis' lighthearted spirit elevated farcical comedies like 1987's "Blind Date" and 1989's "Look Who's Talking," while somber meditations on conflict like 1989's "In Country" and 1998's "The Siege" proved his skills as a serious actor. But Willis' best roles reflected a balance between his considerable acting talents and the charisma of his instinctively performative personality.

7. Dr. Malcolm Crowe, "The Sixth Sense" (1999)

Because Malcolm Crowe is such an effective and empathetic child psychologist, he can't let go of his greatest failure to help a patient, Vincent Grey (Donnie Wahlberg), which only makes him more determined not to fail 9-year-old Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment), a bright but troubled boy whose symptoms disturbingly resemble Vincent's.

Dr. Crowe refuses to mislead or talk down to kids, and when Cole refers to himself as "a freak," Malcolm so passionately denounces anyone who might label Cole as such that he lets slip some adult language, inadvertently impressing Cole with the authenticity of his raw emotions ("You said the s-word"). Malcolm Crowe likewise believes in listening to young people, so when Cole tells him he sees dead people, the initially incredulous doctor nonetheless hears him out, without offering criticism or judgment, then reviews evidence he'd overlooked in Vincent's case that he realizes confirms Cole's stunning claims.

Willis' disciplined performance perfectly complements M. Night Shyamalan's writing and direction in falsely implying key details, while misdirecting the audience away from the story's eventual revelations.

6. Maj. Korben Dallas, "The Fifth Element" (1997)

Filmmaker Luc Besson bombarded audiences with such opulent visuals - from environments and technology imagined by comics artists Jean "Mœbius" Giraud and Jean-Claude Mézières, to decadent costumes designed by fashionista Jean-Paul Gaultier - they nearly overshadowed the traumatized humanity of Korben Dallas, the retired special forces major who's recalled to service to save the world.

Korben reflexively shrugs off his wife leaving him for his lawyer, and how few points he has left on his cab driver's license, but when he jolts awake from nightmares to see the sign reading KEEP CLEAR in his dingy single-room apartment, Korben's shoulders slump wearily as he sighs, "I'm trying."

Korben proves as much a crackerjack combatant as "The Fifth Element," or "Leeloo" for short (Milla Jovovich), albeit after Gen. Munro (Brion James) casually notes that Dallas, while arguably mission-overqualified, is the sole surviving member of his unit. Both Korben and Leeloo bear war-wounded souls, and Willis' voice quavers with vulnerability, first as he quippingly promises to take Leeloo on "a real vacation," then when he finally gets over himself enough to confess he loves her.

5. Butch Coolidge, "Pulp Fiction" (1994)

Without words, Willis made clear why Butch Coolidge couldn't just walk away. Butch's heirloom wristwatch passed through three wars, and three generations of his family, to reach him, so he's obligated to retrieve it, even if he runs afoul of crime boss Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames). But when Butch and Marsellus both fall prey to a pair of sexual predators, who randomly select Marsellus to victimize first, an unattended Butch breaks free from his bonds, and even reaches the open doorway to the pair's lair, when he hears Marsellus' screams.

After blowing up at, and apologizing to, his adorable French girlfriend Fabienne (Maria de Medeiros) for forgetting his watch at their apartment, then shooting hitman Vincent Vega (John Travolta) with his own gun at that apartment, Butch has every reason to abandon Marsellus, who wants him dead for not throwing his boxing match.

Except Butch only inherited his watch because a prisoner of war in Vietnam (Christopher Walken) refused to break faith with Butch's father as a fellow captive. Butch rescues Marsellus, earning the respect of his former foe, plus a reprieve from his retribution.

4. David Dunn, "Unbreakable" trilogy (2000-2019)

Whether you follow the Marvel Cinematic Universe or the DC Extended Universe, David Dunn is your John the Baptist. "Unbreakable" premiered theatrically only four months after the first "X-Men" film in 2000, back when big-screen superheroes were still considered a gamble, but M. Night Shyamalan was always a true believer. He explicitly, repeatedly and reverently references comics, as an art form and mythos, throughout both "Unbreakable" and "Glass" in 2019.

Shyamalan cast David Dunn as a neo-Superman by applying a stylistic "realism" to comics tropes, giving David an alliterative secret identity like Clark Kent, a Kryptonite-level weakness to water, and a brilliant best friend turned archenemy like Lex Luthor. Meanwhile, Willis committed to investing as much somber fallibility into the character as any Zack Snyder hero with feet of clay, without ever smirking or winking at the audience.

David's ignominious drowning in "Glass" nonetheless leads humanity to the metafictional revelation that superheroes can exist even in the most constrained visions of "the real world," which Shyamalan depicts as a triumph over covert forces conspiring to preserve a suppressive prevailing social order throughout civilization's history.

3. James Cole, "12 Monkeys" (1995)

In 2035, James Cole is an antisocial convicted criminal within the underground technocratic society that remains of the human race, 5 billion of whom died of a plague from 1996-1997, so the state scientists "volunteer" Cole to trace the virus' origins by traveling back in time. In 1990, James Cole is a violent, delusional patient at a Baltimore mental hospital, where his claims of coming from the future catch the attention of Dr. Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe), who suspects he's been institutionalized before, and fellow mental patient Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt), whose environmental extremism seems to feed off James' predictions of humanity's fate.

Each time, James dreams of a young boy witnessing an armed man - shooting? Being shot? - in an airport, as a distraught woman rushes to his side. Each time, Cole awakens to wonder how many of his dreams and dismissed delusions are actually memories, and how many of his assumed memories are instead dreams and delusions.

Willis plays Cole as disquietingly childlike, emotionally frozen at the age of his worst trauma, as the boy in the airport, when his world (and ours) ended.

2. David Addison Jr., "Moonlighting" (1985-1989)

Describing "Moonlighting" as a romantic dramedy about the investigative partners of the Blue Moon Detective Agency is as technically accurate as describing "Community" as a sitcom about a study group at Greendale Community College.

Cybill Shepherd and Willis starred as sleuths Madelyn "Maddie" Hayes and David Addison, who solved inventive mysteries, traded snappy banter, parodied pop culture and stirred up simmering romance. Alongside series creator Glenn Gordon Caron, they resurrected the Howard Hawks-style screwball comedy, while pioneering new frontiers of self-aware, fourth wall-breaking satire.

If you've avidly followed any witty, bickering TV couple with unresolved sexual tension between them since the '80s, your favorites were likely inspired by the cocky, chauvinistic David and his no-bull boss-lady Maddie. Reagan-era Willis' rough-hewn, unreconstructed charm still turns 21st century women's heads, and the onscreen heat he generated with Shepherd, culminating in their characters' hookup in the 1987 third-season episode "I Am Curious ... Maddie," was such lightning in a bottle that even shows from the past decade - including "Castle," "New Girl," "Bones" and "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" - have agonized to avoid the "Moonlighting Curse," of smothering their couples' fires by letting them connect.

1. John McClane, "Die Hard" trilogy (1988-1995)

I'm excluding the fourth and fifth "Die Hard" films for John McClane, since those installments arguably detract from the character's ranking among Willis' best roles.

"Die Hard 2" emulated the original too much, while "Die Hard with a Vengeance" negated the progress John and Holly made in their marriage over the first two films, but both sequels stayed true to portraying John McClane as a solidly competent, surprisingly clever cop who's only infrequently been forced to deal with international terrorism or ambitious, elaborate heists. McClane thinks on his feet fast enough to cover for most of what he doesn't already know, and while he's prone to stumbling over his own stubborn pride, he's ultimately smart and caring enough to recognize he needs to be more supportive of his wife.

Like Peter Parker, John McClane is not only the everyday guy we could see ourselves being in extraordinary circumstances, but also the heroic man of action we hope our loved ones would be able to depend upon in a crisis.