Whatever something is wrong when Bruce Willis isn’t convincing as a cop. Reportedly, Bruce’s scenes were filmed in one day. How about that title, though?įrank Grillo stars as a Cincinnati banker who enlists the help of his next-door neighbor, an ex-cop (Bruce), to take down the psychopath who is robbing his bank branches. His line readings are unsettlingly off, and his reported one-day availability required some resourceful use of stunt doubles (shots of his character running through the woods seen only from the waist down are a dead giveaway). Here, Bruce really doesn’t seem to give an actual fuck. Bruce, a 35-year veteran cop, has also come to this neck of the woods following the death of his wife for a little peace and quiet.
No sooner does Jamie King venture into the woods to scatter her dead father’s ashes then she witnesses a crooked officer killing her partner in crime. This is his watch.” I know Pulp Fiction, right? If Bruce Willis actually sneaked a Christopher Walken impression into a Chinese propaganda film, then he truly is, as one of the Chinese aviators anachronistically describes him, a badass. He said that if anything ever happened to him, he should give it to his son, and he did. At the 54-minute mark, Willis offers his squadron a pre-raid toast: “My father was a soldier as well. (Insert your own joke here.) Willis gets his John Wayne on as military adviser Colonel Jack Johnson, who whips Chinese aviators into fighting shape to take on the superior Japanese forces. I don’t know who said that, but I’m pretty sure they never imagined a place like Pensacola”) is unforgiveable.Īn alternate title for this World War II Chinese propaganda film is The Bombing. But the shameless opening crib from Blood Simple (drawling about predators and prey, the narrator says, “Humans are the only creatures on Earth given a choice. The lone and fleeting bright spot is Welker White, a Scorsese veteran ( Goodfellas, The Irishman), in a bracing bit of character work as the mother of one of the missing girls.
#BRUCE WILLIS RECENT MOVIES SERIAL#
His less than eight minutes of screen time are devoted to generic straight lines (“This is gonna be bad”) and a couple of diner-set two-handers with Megan Fox that scream, “We only have Bruce for the day.” Fox, though, carries her scenes as a rogue FBI agent whose sex-trafficking investigation dovetails with the search for a serial killer. Enjoy them, if you dare.īruce is an inessential worker here. Our ranking below determines which of these films delivers your Willis worth, and which are the most entertaining 75 minutes that Bruce isn’t onscreen. You can do worse than, say, Fire With Fire. Reviews of these films tend to be scathing, snide, and snarky (and those are just the S’s) and have been the subject of think pieces (well, not so much think pieces as WTF pieces) that ponder variations on the theme: Why does one of the once biggest action stars in the world keep turning up in this dreck?īut why ask why? You like Bruce and you’ve got 90 minutes to kill. But Bruce puts asses on the couch, so he is prominently featured in the trailers and on the posters. Ye shall know them by their generic titles and judicious use of Bruce, whose total screen time in each rarely surpasses 15 minutes. As someone remarks in Apex, “He used to be something great, but he’s at the end of his rope now.”Īt this point, these films are almost their own genre. Since this ranking was last revised this past September, five more have been released. Most are distinguished by the ingenious ways the producers hide that Bruce was only available for a limited time (reportedly only a day in several cases) and eke out roughly 10 minutes of screen time per picture. A good Bruce line delivery here, a standout supporting performance there, and some WTF casting (see: Shannon Doherty as a general in The Fortress) make these serviceable diversions, but with each one, the career highs of Die Hard and The Sixth Sense are but dimmer and dimmer memories. He released eight of these in 2021 alone, a feat that the Razzie Awards noted with its new category, Worst Performance by Bruce Willis in a 2021 Movie. It is yet another mostly forgettable genre film that has been Willis’ stock in trade since 2011. This article originally ran in 2020 and has been updated to include Bruce Willis’ latest straight-to-VOD titles.Īnyone hoping that American Siege, Bruce Willis’ newest straight to VOD release, would usher in a long-awaited Bruce-aissance, will have to keep waiting.
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