Bruce Willis’ three films in the IMDb top 250 are not surprising

At st 2021 Comedy Central Roast of Bruce Willishost Joseph Gordon-Levitt delivered the classic joke: “I loved The Sixth Sense. It’s a great movie, and I didn’t see this twist coming … At the end of The Sixth Sense, Bruce goes back to making f***ing movies.”

It’s funny because, well, it’s true: The Sixth Sense is considered one of Bruce Willis’ last really good movies. Sure, he gave some hilarious performances in Slevin’s Happy Number and Moonrise Kingdom, but the terrible drama M. 1999’s Night Shyamalan was pretty much the last time Willis was the leading man in a massive critical and commercial hit.

On IMDb, The Sixth Sense has a rating of 8.2, making it #144 on the site’s list of the 250 best movies. It’s not a surprising placement, given how influential it has become in pop culture. People have been quoting “I see dead people” for years after, and it’s become a popular style for a jerk character to spoil the ending of a movie for other characters coming into it for the first time.

The film was so good that it cast a giant, slightly unfair shadow over the rest of the director’s films. For more than ten years M. Night Shyamalan has consistently compared his projects to The Sixth Sense, an unfair standard by which to judge any film. The film also earned Shyamalan’s reputation its big Twilight Zone style twists.even if there is much more to his story than that.

But as iconic as The Sixth Sense is, according to IMDb, it’s only the third highest-rated film in Willis’ filmography. His actual top-rated film came five years earlier, with Willis playing a minor role in …

Bruce Willis doesn’t play the main character in Crimson, but many claim that his character Butch is one of the main characters of the film along with Jules (Samuel L. Jackson). Although Jules and Vincent (John Travolta) are often seen as the main duo of the film, only Jules and Butch go through a real characters’ journey. Jules becomes disillusioned with his life of crime and decides to walk away from it, while Butch decides to make amends after his initial betrayal of gangster Marcellus (Ving Rhames). Like Jules, Butch displays an inner sense of morality: he saves Marcellus’ life despite knowing that he might die in the process and that Marcellus might still kill him afterwards.

While Crime Scene can’t quite be called a Bruce Willis film in the same sense as The Sixth Sense, Willis has an important role to play here on and off screen. Not only is he involved in some of the film’s most action-packed moments, Willis’ name on the cast list was a big part of what made the film a guaranteed box office hit. In 1994, Willis was one of the most recognizable names associated with the film and had obvious international appeal, which helped the production attract many international distribution rights.

How did Bruce Willis become such a beloved leader? Well, it has something to do with his earliest IMDb Top 250 movie, Die Hard. The 1988 thriller may be “only” rating 8.2which ranks 117th overall and well below that 8.9 rating “Criminal Reading”, but this is possibly the most impressive film of Willis’ career…

No wonder Die Hard is so highly rated. Alan Rickman kills it as the cunning and cold-blooded thief Hans Gruber. As a kid, I often wondered if I was a bad person for rooting for him, but after re-watching it, it’s clear that the movie wants you to root for him at least a little bit. The scene where Hans pretends to be a frightened hostage, and it’s not entirely clear how much McClane buys it, is told mostly from Gruber’s point of view, which makes us stress on Gruber’s behalf, as it seems like McClane is going to kill him early.

But as wonderful as Rickman’s performance is, it’s Willis as McClane who holds the whole story together, delivering a fierce yet vulnerable performance that made the world swoon. And unlike Crime Scene, Willis is undeniably the main character here; the film lives and dies by Willis’ ability to make us believe in and root for this brave New York cop. Although Willis was already somewhat of a household name thanks to the TV show Moonlighting, it was the movie that made him a household name. Hard to believe that Fox drop it as a last resortbut thank goodness they did.