*Bruce Willis is taking a break from acting as he battles aphasia, a neurological condition that affects the ability to communicate. 3/30/2022
Want to know the best Bruce Willis movies? How about the worst Bruce Willis movies? Curious about Bruce Willis’s box office grosses or which Bruce Willis movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Bruce Willis movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place.
I have followed Bruce Willis’ career since he hit the big time with his star making role as David Addison on Moonlighting. I still think the Moonlighting 3 episode story arc with Mark Harmon,was some the best television I have ever seen and the pinnacle of that series. Since Moonlighting, Bruce Willis has had a very busy career, making over 60 movies over the last 27 years. It has been a roller coaster ride…the highs….. movies like Pulp Fiction, most of the Die Hards, and The Sixth Sense…..the lows….movies like The Whole Ten Yards, Hudson Hawk, Bonfire of the Vanities and North. His IMDb page shows 145 acting credits since 1980. In the table below, Ultimate Movie Rankings ranks movies in 6 different sortable columns.
Bruce Willis Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews, and awards.
Bruce Willis Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort Bruce Willis movies by movie title and movie trailers.
- Sort Bruce Willis movies by co-stars of his movies.
- Sort Bruce Willis movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost
- Sort Bruce Willis movies by adjusted worldwide box office grosses using current movie ticket cost
- Sort Bruce Willis movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations each Bruce Willis movie received and how many Oscar® wins each Bruce Willis movie won.
- Sort Bruce Willis movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Bruce Willis
1. Walter Bruce Willis was born on March 19, 1955, in the town of Idar-Oberstein, West Germany. His dad was an American while his mother was a German.
2. Bruce Willis worked as a bartender when he was a struggling actor in New York City.
3. In 1984, Bruce Willis left New York City to audition for roles in Los Angeles.
4. Bruce Willis’ big break was getting the role in the television series Moonlighting (1985-1989). Glenn Gordon Caron had to fight with ABC to put Willis in the lead role having already signed Shepherd for both the pilot and series. Caron claims he tested Willis about a third of the way through testing over 2,000 actors, knew “this was the guy” immediately, and had to fight through twice as many more acting tests and readings while arguing with ABC executives before receiving (initial) conditional authorization to cast Willis in the pilot. ABC, according to Caron, did not feel that anyone viewing would think there could possibly be any “believable” sexual tension between Shepherd and Willis.
5. Although Bruce Willis was the 115th choice to play John McClane in 1988’s Die Hard….he was given an unheard, at the time, salary of $5 million dollars.
6. Bruce Willis was the only celebrity that attended Julia Roberts’ wedding to Daniel Moder. Their friendship is referred to in Ocean’s Twelve (2004), when he mistakes Tess Ocean for Julia Roberts, and asks her about ‘Danny’.
7. Bruce Willis was the first actor to ever “act” in a video game (Apocalypse (1998)). No one before had ever done voice work along with having their likeness and movements digitally added to the game, as well as receiving prominent billing on the game’s cover.
8. Bruce Willis was considered for the role of Kyle Reese in The Terminator (1984), which went to Michael Biehn.
9. Bruce Willis has been married two times. He has 5 daughters. His first marriage was to Demi Moore. His current marriage is to Emma Heming.
10. Check out Bruce Willis’ career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
Personal Top Ten Bruce Willis Movies
- Die Hard
- The Fifth Element
- Looper
- Lucky Number Slevin
- Nobody’s Fool
- Pulp Fiction
- Sin City
- The Sixth Sense
- Twelve Monkeys
- Unbreakable
Our You Tube Video that goes through the Rankings all of Bruce Willis’ movies.
My Letterboxd.com Bruce Willis Movie Reviews.
Steve Lensman’s Bruce Willis Top 50 Movies You Tube Video
If you do a comment….please ignore the email address and website section.
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Last night I duly watched Willis in 2018’s Reprisal. It was no work of art but if one likes Brucie it was passable entertainment so I enjoyed it reasonably well.
The opening had a “light of former days” touch to it though because as top billed star Frank Grillo passes his elderly neighbour Willis working in the latter’s garden Grillo says “Good morning old man.” and Brucie replies “I could take you anytime punk!”
The latter was probably true as Willis was no ordinary elderly neighbour but was a SUPER “old timer” -hey that part could have been written for me! – who ultimately becomes a sort of mentor to Grillo and joins him in the action “I’m here for you neighbour.” [The Willis character is a retired police officer and John McClane would have approved of the finale]
Still Bruce does get short-changed because when they were approaching his age Scott, McCrea and Astaire were still being addressed on-screen as “Young man.”
Nevertheless I knew straightaway that the movie definitely fitted quite snugly into Mr Moore’s filmography because before it started there flashed up on the TV screen “WARNING. This film contains strong language.”
Indeed even when there was silence the expletive deleteds were flowing. During the bank heist the robber, not wanting his voice to be recognised, simply hands Grillo a note which says “Open the ******g safe.”
Hey Bob….I thought Reprisal was ok….here is my review of that movie…thank you Letterboxd.
Another low budget Bruce Willis movie. So sad…especially since I am such a big Willis fan. In this one, Willis plays second fiddle to Frank Grillo. The first quarter of the movie is not so bad. I enjoyed Grillo and Willis tracking down the bad guy. The rest of the movie is bad. The action is average at best. The twists and turns are dumb. The finale is staged horribly. Tack on one of the worst post action scenes I have ever seen…and you end up with another Willis dud. Hope Glass returns Bruce to some glory.
HI TEACH; Thanks for sharing your review with me. I agree that Reprisal has “small scale” all over it. It runs for only 91 mins and, whilst I couldn’t find a budget figure for it, the flick [per IMDB] took just over one hundred thousand dollars at the global box office though It did much better in video sales, clocking up almost $1 million in the US alone.
Every review that I’ve read agrees with yours with one calling it “a mess” and another even joining me in lamenting the fact that Brucie had to take 2nd billing to Grillo! However for me it’s “The Singer not the Song” and I always find Willis, though in my book no Mumbles/The Duke, entertaining and when I’m tired in the evenings I don’t want to wrestle with something “heavy” so I’m happy enough to watch Bruce for a while despite the shortcomings of some of his recent material. I never have been “hoity toity” like you and Hirsch!
“Bottom line?” [as Donald Moffat kept saying/asking in 1991’s Class Action] – I don’t like any of the modern action heroes such as Statham and The Rock [whom I have noticed in worse films than Reprisal but which still made a pile of money] and Mr Moore is just about the only one of the old action hero gang that I can still watch today.
Certainly Brian A. Miller the director of Reprisal apparently joins me in wanting more of Demi’s X because Miller also directed Willis in the Prince (2014) and Vice [2015]. To sum up Brucie made The Last Boy Scout and Arnie starred in The Last Action Hero. For me Mr Moore may prove to be the latter as well. Keep safe.
Perhaps you could change Donald Moffitt to Donald MOFFAT [wonderful actor who died the year of Reprisal] in my last post if you have a moment – many thanks.
Hey Bob….I agree with your comment. The Bruce Willis/Brian A. Miller combo is currently working on a 4th movie…..a low budget gem called Ten Minutes Gone.
“A crime thriller that centers on a man whose memory has been lost due to a bank heist gone wrong. The character will need to piece together the missing 10 minutes from his memory in order to determine who sabotaged him. ”
Working on the edit button to work again…apparently….like other behind the scenes stuff….that widget does not seem to like the theme we have to use. Good stuff.
HI BRUCE Thanks for making the correction. 10 Minutes Gone sounds to be at least a potentially interesting plot line.
A lot of Mr Moore’s duds don’t make your Willis table because they went straight to video and/or were negligible grossers. However The Numbers seems to include EVERYTHING [even showing blank income against some of them] and 12 Willis films that they have listed that are not in your charts would bring the current Willis adjusted average of $88.2 million per movie that you quote sharply down to approx $75.8 million.
Sad. It apparently used to be that at Columbia Harry Cohn, before deciding on final casting for upcoming productions, would check the last 3 grosses of potential contenders for the roles. He did that with even his mega stars – eg Rita Hayworth prior to approving her for the role of Salome in 1953.
My one word review of Glass. Disappointing.
Hey Helakoski….I agree with your one word review of Glass. I will admit, it seems to be having some positive support. It actually has a chance to be #1 again this weekend. Granted there is not much competition. Thanks for stopping by …..hope all is going well for you.
Do I do dream
Or Do I doubt?
Do eyes and ears deceive me?
Are things what they seem,
Or are visions about?
I have just watched Bruce Willis’ Death Wish remake and thought that I had entered the Twilight Zone when I watched Willis tell off another guy for swearing at a girls’ football match in which Willis’ daughter was playing. Isn’t there an old saying that advises that the pot shouldn’t call the kettle black?
The guy then challenges Bruce to a fight. Fools rush in where wise men fear to tread – that guy just didn’t know who he was talking to!
He may be getting on a bit and be past his best but Willis is still fascinating to watch. A very much underrated artist – even on UMR tables! “Et tu Brute?”
Hey Bob….good to see you checked out Death Wish. I remember the scene of the language….Bruce is way old enough to be a grandfather…..so we granddads…..do not like profanity as much…..lol. I thought Death Wish was ok….I actually really enjoyed the first half….before it turned into a standard action movie. Bruce is really good in Glass….as one of the complaints of that movie is his character is not used enough….I take that as a good sign…..people wanted more Bruce in Glass. Is the comeback coming? I hope so…..if not…he should do the Caine route…take supporting roles in big budget movies. Thanks for the feedback.
HI BRUCE I very much enjoyed Willis’ Death Wish. However
1/I liked it because of Bruce’s magnetism but thought that technically Bronson brought more of the concept of “ordinary guy goes rogue” to the part of Paul Kersey. Once Bruce’s Kersey turned vigilante it was to me very much John McClane going after the bad guys again.
2/I also think that it was a mistake to ‘promote’ Kersey from architect in the Bronson version to surgeon in the Willis one. Both professions are middle class, skilled and upwardly mobile but surgeons tend to be more aloof from the general public and don’t fit into the ‘Joe average’ concept as much as some architects could do. Also it is the training and raison detre of the surgeon to save and not take lives and I find it difficult to envisage one going on a murderous rampage unless he/she had gone mad, which Kersey hadn’t.
However to be fair to Willis he probably had to try something different as it is always difficult to shine in replicating a role that another actor has done well and made famous. One or two actors were successful in portraying Streetcar’s Stanley on the stage and TV but Tennessee Williams advised Stallone against attempting that on the big screen as he suggested to Sly that in THAT medium ole Mumbles owned the part with cinema audiences.
However in a definitive comparison of Willis with Bronson, for once Team Hirschhorn and Cogerson cannot help as a single entity, being unavoidably split [no pun intended!] with The Work Horse idolising Willis whilst The Master in the fabled 1983 Book of Stars excludes Willis [who did not debut in movies until 1987] and does include and praise Bronson.
Anyhow thanks for your reply to both the Willis and Helen Hayes posts. Please take care.
Hey Bob…good point about the change in jobs for the hero of the movie. In the book, Paul was a CPA. Maybe they should have gone in that direction. I agree….it turned into Die Hardish at the end….but when he was in meltdown mode…..I liked the movie a lot. I fixed your paragraph, that you requested to be fixed. I would have loved to read a Joel breakdown on Bruce. Too bad Joel, or Consumer Reports never updated the book….there was 18 years from the book to Joel’s passing.
FYI. Funny you mentioned Brando and Streetcar. This weekend we were working on the book….and I changed the picture of Brando from The God Father to Streetcar Named Desire. When WoC saw the picture of the young Brando….she said…”He’s a hunk….I had never seen him when we was young”. I thought it was funny……but also saw the power of Brando’s youth. Good stuff as always.
HI BRUCE Thanks for fixing that error. Interesting observations from W o C. Tell her that among the exhibits at a prestigious exhibition of the works of the famous English fashion, portrait and war photographer Sir Cecil Beaton was a photograph which Sir Cecil took of Brando in the latter’s heartthrob early twenties before Hollywood stardom and in the exhibition the photograph was entitled “Lost Youth and Beauty” and Beaton himself labelled it “Bright Young People.”
I forgot to say that the one thing I didn’t like about Bronson’s Death Wish was the ending in which if I recall correctly Kersey quietly leaves town to pursue his vigilante activities elsewhere. I thought that was anti anti-climatic and preferred the Willis ending for all its “John McClaneishness” Just my personal choice though and I wouldn’t be dogmatic about it.
Anyhow you and I will not compete for the last word on the subject but will leave that to The Master at least in relation to Bronson
“Charles Bronson proved conclusively that magnetism and leading man authority have nothing to do with conventional good looks.His craggy features and wrestler’s body suggest power and he is a capable actor when the script is right.”
The All Seeing One went on to say that in the 1974 Death Wish he thought Bronson went “somewhat overboard in violence” but nevertheless gives a “strong central performance” overlooked by many critics who were too busy instead questioning the vigilante morality of the movie.
Fine praise indeed from the Hard to Please One but I wonder what Charlie would have prized most (1) those accolades from The Master or (2) being, instead of Brando, the only actor ever to be called “Sir” on set by Death Wish director Michael Winner?
Love talking Bruce with you Bob. Good stuff.
Thus are the mighty fallen. Willis is billed 2nd to James McEvoy in Glass and Mr Moore swore that Mrs Moore would be the only person ever to lord it over him!
I am surprised that Willis’ chief idolater on this site gives Glass just a 59% rating because it does much better with IMDB at 73%
Hey Bob. Bruce and Samuel pretty much have supporting roles to McAvoy. Heck SLJ does not even speak until about the 75 minute mark. Bruce’s character arc ends with a wimper versus a bang. Sadly sort of like Bruce’s movie career. I will be updating the rating when I get home. The reviews have been like the second movie in this franchise……Split.
HI BRUCE
Even for 15 minute role in Superman and Apocalypse Now Mr Mumbles was top billed.
It’s very early days of course but reports in the press suggest that Glass opened to much lower box office than had been widely anticipated.
I will keep an eye of your updating of the Split entry on this page.
Please take care.
The Bob and cogerson, great dialogue. thanks. I enjoyed willis in death wish( a 7) but what a waste. most of the character development was about the ladies , whose roles should have been minimal. there was little wit for one of the strongest action/comedy stars ever, willis has great timing since moonlighting ,his delivery of comedic lines made the die hard series great( as well as Armageddon and fifth element) . they ignored this strength. even the cursing scene was played straight and could have been outrageously funny. I love to laugh.
HI BOB
Some good points from you about the ladies and always nice to hear from you anyway. Just one complaint though – when you put my name in a post beside “bob Cox and Cogerson” please place BOB [Roy] in capitals. You know how much I like to see adherence to correct billing!
Regarding the ladies I found one of the most implausible things in the plot was Kersey’s daughter being up and about and full of beans after her terrifying experience, a deep coma and the loss of her mother. It seems to me that regardless of the rate of her physical recovery the mental trauma would have caused severe depression for much longer.
In the Bronson version the daughter NEVER recovered from the mental scars of her ordeal and in fact remained a zombie if I recall correctly. Still I suppose that The Work Horse would argue that realism would in fact dictate that any Willis offspring in a movie would be bound to be more resilient than anyone else’s child even if the other person was also a great action star!
Nevertheless for me Willis’ charisma will always compensate for any plot weaknesses or absurdities. Take care Bob.
Hey bob cox…thanks for the mini-review of Death Wish….sadly Bruce just got a Razzie Award for Best Actor…..seems they picked him, due to his name versus his performance. Overall, critics hated the movie, but audiences have given it a pretty good rating. Good stuff.
https://www.allacronyms.com/UMR/Ultimate_Movie_Rankings
I stumbled across this when doing a google search to find your website. You might find it interesting. Seems you get first notice on UMR.
Hey R. Hinders….good find. That is awesome that UltimateMovieRankings is considered the most known UMR….especially since we have not been around very long. Thanks for sharing this link with us.