Bruce Willis’ Three Movies in IMDb’s Top 250 Are Not Surprising

To the 2021 Comedy Central Roast of Bruce Willishost Joseph Gordon-Levitt delivered this classic joke: “I loved ‘The Sixth Sense.’ It’s a great movie. And the ending, I didn’t see that twist coming… At the end of ‘The Sixth Sense,’ Bruce does it again. shitty movies.”

It’s funny because, well, it’s true: “The Sixth Sense” is widely considered one of Bruce Willis’s last truly good films. Sure, he gave some fun performances in “Lucky Number Slevin” and “Moonrise Kingdom,” but M. Night Shyamalan’s spooky 1999 drama was pretty much the last time Willis was the lead in a major critical and commercial hit.

On IMDb, “The Sixth Sense” has a rating of 8.2, ranking 144th out of the site’s 250 highest-rated films. It’s not a surprising placement, given the influence it had on pop culture. People were quoting “I see dead people” for years, and it’s become a popular comedy trope to have an idiot character ruin the ending of the movie so another character enters the movie for the first time.

The film was so good that it cast a giant, somewhat unfair shadow over the rest of the director’s films. For more than a decade, M. Night Shyamalan constantly compared his projects to “The Sixth Sense,” an unfair standard by which to judge any film. The film also earned Shyamalan a reputation for big, “Twilight Zone”-style twists, although there’s a lot more to its storytelling than that.

But as iconic as “The Sixth Sense” was, according to IMDb it is still only the third highest-rated film in Willis’ filmography. His true highest-rated film was released five years earlier, with Willis playing a minor role…

Bruce Willis does not play the main character in “Pulp Fiction,” but many would say that his character Butch is the film’s co-star alongside Jules (Samuel L. Jackson). Although Jules and Vincent (John Travolta) are often seen as the film’s main duo, only Jules and Butch go through a genuine character journey. Jules becomes disillusioned with his life of crime and decides to walk away from it, while Butch decides to redeem himself after his initial betrayal of gangster Marsellus (Ving Rhames). Like Jules, Butch reveals an inner sense of morality: he saves Marsellus’s life despite knowing that he might die in the process and that Marsellus might kill him afterwards anyway.

Although “Pulp Fiction” can’t really be called a Bruce Willis film in the same way that “The Sixth Sense” was, Willis plays a vital role here on and off screen. Not only is he involved in some of the film’s most action-packed moments, but Willis’ name on the cast list was a big part of what made the film a guaranteed box office hit. By 1994, Willis was one of the biggest names in the film and had a clear international appeal that helped the production attract many international distribution rights.

How did Bruce Willis become such a beloved star? Well, that has something to do with his first IMDb Top 250 movie, “Die Hard.” The 1988 thriller could be “one of a kind” rating 8.2ranking 117th overall and well below the “Pulp Fiction” rating of 8.9 but it’s arguably the most impressive film of Willis’ career…

It’s no surprise that “Die Hard” is rated so highly. Alan Rickman kills it as the scheming and ruthless thief Hans Gruber. As a kid, I often worried if I was a bad person for supporting him, but upon rewatching it it seems clear that the film wants you to admire him at least a little. The scene where Hans pretends to be a frightened hostage, and it’s not at all clear how much McClane buys him, is told primarily from Gruber’s point of view, which stresses us out on Gruber’s part, as it looks like McClane is about to to kill him before his time.

But as charming as Rickman’s performance is, it’s Willis as McClane who holds the entire story together, delivering a tough but vulnerable performance that left the entire world swooning. And unlike “Pulp Fiction,” Willis is undeniably the main character here; The film lives and dies on Willis’s ability to make us believe in and root for this brave New York cop. Although Willis was already somewhat famous thanks to the television show “Moonlighting,” this was the movie that made him a household name. It’s hard to believe Fox chose him as a last resort, but thank goodness they did.