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The 17 Best Bruce Willis Movies, Ranked

In celebration of Die Hard turning 35

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Columbia Pictures

Published Jul 19, 2023

Die Hard celebrated it's 35th anniversary on July 15th, and all we have to say is this—we hope Bruce Willis knows how appreciated he is, and how he has given us some of the most entertaining films in cinematic history. First shooting to stardom with a leading role on the series Moonlighting, Willis shot to fame with his portrayal of John McClane in the Die Hard franchise. Willis' resume spans over a hundred films, and includes loads of all timers and classics. When you have dozens upon dozens of legendary movies in your catalog, it's hard to put together a definitive ranking of what is the best without feeling like you missed something. However, we are going to give it our best shot. So here it is—the best Bruce Willis movies, ranked.

17. Tears of the Sun (2003)

Directed By: Antoine Fuqua
Written By: Alex Lasker and Patrick Cirillo
Stars: Bruce Willis, Monica Belluci
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 34%

Tears of the Sun is a movie we believe didn't get the credit it deserved at the time of its release. The story focuses on Willis' Lt. A.K. Waters who has been assigned the duties of leading a team of soldiers into the Nigerian jungle to rescue Dr. Lena Kendricks (Bellucci), who lets Lt. Waters and the squad know she isn't leaving her patients behind to encounter danger. What results is the team siding with Kendricks, which in turn causes pushback and commotion from both the U.S. and Nigerian forces.

16. The Jackal (1997)

Directed By: Michael Caton-Jones
Written By: Chuck Pfarrer
Stars: Bruce Willis, Richard Gere, Sydney Poitier
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 24%

Want to see Bruce Willis as a hired hitman? Then watch 1997's The Jackal, where Willis stars as Jackal, an anonymous hitman hired to kill FBI Deputy Director Carter Preston (Poitier) as an act of retaliation for the brother of Russian gangster Terek Murad (David Hayman) being killed during an FBI raid at a night club in Russia. A nice little late 1990s movie that you can pop on whenever.

15. Over the Hedge (2006)

Directed By: Tim Johnson and Karey Kirkpatrick
Written By: Len Blum, Lorne Cameron, David Hoselton, and Karey Kirkpatrick
Stars: Bruce Willis, Gary Shandling, Steve Carell, William Shatner, Wanda Sykes, Nick Nolte
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 75%

Remember Over The Hedge from the 2006? Bruce Willis was RJ the Raccoon. Honestly, Over The Hedge is one of those must-see animation films from the 2000s, and you're missing out if you haven't seen and/or aren't passing it down to the younger generations in your family.

14. The Whole Nine Yards (2000)

Directed By: Jonathan Lynn
Written By: Mitchell Kapner
Stars: Bruce Willis, Matthew Perry, Amanda Peet, Michael Clark Duncan, Natasha Henstridge
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 43%

While The Whole Nine Yards may have done so-so at the box office, it still performed well enough to spawn a sequel in 2004. In it, Willis portrays mob hitman-turned-informant Jimmy "The Tulip" Tudeski, who's life is in danger after ratting on the mob. Tudeski think's that he's been able to get away from his past life with a fresh start in a new city. That is until he gets recognized by his next door neighbor (Matthew Perry). Fun stuff.

13. Mercury Rising (1998)

Directed By: Harold Becker
Written By: Mark Rosenthal and Lawrence Konner
Stars: Bruce Willis, Alec Baldwin, Chi McBride
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 21%

Not sure why the reviews and scores for Mercury Rising are so low as we think it was an excellent film. Personally, I think it's because the primary way of premiering/releasing movies back then was by way of a theater release. And what the streaming era has allowed us to understand is, not every movie is suitable for theaters (and that's absolutely okay). Mercury Rising was about an FBI agent ( Willis) going out of his way to protect a young kid who accidentally cracks a government code from a program chief (Baldwin) that essentially wants to kill him. A nice little Saturday/Sunday afternoon film that's enjoyable.

12. Red (2010)

Directed By: Robert Schwentke
Written By: Jon Hoeber and Erich Hoeber
Stars: Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 72%

Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, and Morgan Freeman all in one film together? Epic. Throw in the likes of Karl Urban, Richard Dreyfuss, Julian McMahon, and more? Double Epic. 2010's Red was early 2010s action at its finest as it honed in on CIA agent Frank Moses (Willis) gathering up his old team for war after discovering there's been an underlying conspiracy to threaten their lives. There's a certain vibe that action movies from the late 2000s/early 2010s possess. We can't quite explain it, but when you watch this film and the others from that time period, you'll know what we're talking about.

11. Armageddon (1998)

Directed By: Michael Bay
Written By: Robert Roy Pool and Jonathan Hensleigh
Stars: Bruce Willis, Liv Tyler, Ben Affleck, Steve Buscemi
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 43%

Alright, this is already starting to get hard. Some have Armageddon as a take it or leave it film when it comes to Bruce Willis' best movies. We'll take it. It didn't get the greatest reviews from critics upon its releases, but it's the highest-grossing film of 1998 with a box office revenue $553 million. Armageddon smashed, and managed take a concept that isn't always universally loved by people (not everybody likes NASA/space-themed movies), and make it a huge success. Armageddon has proven to hold its own over time.

10. Moonrise Kingdom (2011)

Directed By: Wes Anderson
Written By: Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola
Stars: Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Kara Hayward, Bill Murray
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%

A Wes Anderson production set in 1965, Moonrise Kingdom is about the residents of an island off the coast of New England called New Penzance, which seems to be oblivious to all of the bad things happening around the world. To add to the dynamic, two 12-year-olds decide they are going to run away because they've fallen in love, but their plans get throttled by a violent storm that's on the way (it's Wes Anderson, you had to know something chaotic was coming). Definitely checkout Moonrise Kingdom if you want to see the results of Wes Anderson and Bruce Willis working together.

9. Death Becomes Her (1992)

Directed By: Robert Zemeckis
Written By: Martin Donovan and David Koepp
Stars: Bruce Willis, Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, Isabella Rossellini
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 55%

Sorry Bruce! The women stole the show in this one. Death Becomes Her is a wild (and we do mean wild) ride about a novelist (Hawn) ending up in a psych ward after losing her lover to a former friend and movie star (Streep). She gets the ultimate revenge, however, when she returns to confront the couple several years later looking beyond radiant and youthful. The secret? A mysterious drug which grants eternal life to the person who drinks it. Interesting turn of events for sure, but one worth watching.

8. Looper (2012)

Directed By: Rian Johnson
Written By: Rian Johnson
Stars: Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emily Blunt
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%

There's a reason why this film is called Looper. In short, there's basically a way to achieve time travel in the future, but the ability is only granted to those willing to pay on the black market. Obviously, whenever something is innovated there's also those that are looking to use said innovation in a not-so-great way, and the mob has gotten ahold of time travel capabilities. What are they doing you ask? They are sending a hitman into the past to kill people they want eliminated. Joe (Gordon-Levitt) gets hired to do the task at hand, and all seems to be going well until the mob wants to send him to go kill his future self (Willis).

7. Sin City (2005)

Directed By: Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez
Written By: Frank Miller
Stars: Bruce Willis, Clive Owen, Rosario Dawson, Jessica Alba, Brittany Murphy
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 76%

Sin City did its thing as it focused on quartet of neo-noir tales about different individuals around the city. Willis' role in this 2005 gem was that of cop John Hartigan, who's on the hunt child-killer (Nick Stahl). As you can imagine, a movie named Sin City is definitely one that is going to chronicle lots of sins and sinners, and that is exactly the case with this film.

6. Twelve Monkeys (1995)

Directed By: Terry Gilliam
Written By: David Peoples, Janet Peoples
Stars: Bruce Willis, Brad Pitt
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 88%

Another time traveling escapade, Twelve Monkeys is about a man named James Cole (Willis), who's imprisoned in the 2030s. James winds up getting recruited for mission that will send him back to the 1990s (we'd very much like to go back to the 1990s as well, but that's off-topic), with the task being to gather information about a plague that's going to eliminate most of the world's population. The only problem is that, James, kinda has no help for being someone who's got the fate of the world in his hands. Like...no help at all.

5. The Fifth Element (1997)

Directed By: Luc Besson
Written By: Luc Besson, Robert Mark Kamen
Stars: Bruce Willis, Gary Oldman, Ian Holm, Milla Jovovich, Chris Tucker
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 71%

If you can't appreciate The Fifth Element as being one of the greatest films of the latter half of the 1990s, then we're not sure if we can rock with you. The fate of the world randomly being left in the hands of a cab driver (Willis), and the group of characters he has to work with to save the day makes this film the perfect balance of comedy and action.

4. Unbreakable (2000)

Directed By: M. Night Shyamalan
Written By: M. Night Shyamalan
Stars: Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Robin Wright, Spencer Treat Clark, Charlayne Woodard
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 70%

2000's Unbreakable kicks off the Split series, and this first installment centers around a man named David Dunn (Willis), who is the lone survivor of a fatal car crash. Dunn realizes his reasonings for surviving the crash when everybody else didn't is because he harbors superhuman abilities, and what follows are events that make Unbreakable one of the greatest superhero films of the past twenty-plus years.

3. Pulp Fiction (1994)

Directed By: Quentin Tarantino
Written By: Quentin Tarantino
Stars: Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, John Travolta, Uma Therman
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 92%

Who could ever forget Bruce Willis as bloody Butch Coolidge? The answer is nobody. Nobody can ever forget Bruce Willis as bloody Butch Coolidge.

2. The Sixth Sense (1999)

Directed By: M. Night Shyamalan
Written By: M. Night Shyamalan
Stars: Bruce Willis, Haley Joel Osment
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 86%

The Sixth Sense is one of the best Bruce Willis movies of all time. Period. Diving into the horror realm, The Sixth Sense chronicles a child named Cole (Joel Osment) who has the ability to see and communicate with the supernatural. Understandably, Cole is frightened about his abilities, and only trusts child psychologist Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Willis), but that comes with consequences for the both of them. Cue the scary music.

1. Die Hard (1988)

Directed By: John McTiernan
Written By: Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza
Stars: Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%

It's would have been a cop out to put every single Die Hard on this list (though they can all fit on here honestly), so we all have to say is this—happy 35th anniversary to a classic.

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