What’s Bruce Willis’ Mount Rushmore?

In looking back at undisputed entertainment icon Bruce Willis’ illustrious career, there’s innumerable hits and classics. So which are the best of the best? What’s the accomplished actor’s Mount Rushmore, or four best films?

Given the unfortunate status of Willis’ health, it feels even more appropriate to take a look back at his unrivaled body of work and celebrate it. I turned to entertainment reporter, and author of the new book Bruce Willis: Celebrating the Life of an Unbreakable Hollywood Icon, Sean O’Connell for help. O’Connell tackles Willis’ Mount Rushmore in-depth for the conclusion of his book.

“I think looking back at his career, a lot of people, I hope, are now waking up to the fact that he is far more versatile than he gets credit for,” O’Connell, also the managing editor for CinemaBlend, told me. “And it was really easy to take him for granted in the moment as an action star. But in sitting down to research this book, I've figured out so many more things that he accomplished. I kind of noticed but didn't pay that close attention [before] to the bigger swings that he took.

“I think people are starting to just appreciate him. You're hearing all the stories about his health updates, and it's, I hope, causing people to sort of reassess his career as a performer because I'm not quite sure that he got the due as an actor that he deserved during the length of his career. I think he kind of got lumped into the action category and people just sort of took him for granted about what he could deliver on that front.”

According to Sean, there were choices Bruce made in his on-screen work that made him stand out from other actors.

“Well, I think in his best roles, even in the action genre, in any of the genres, he went out of his way to make that character relatable. And I thought that's what set him apart from the other action heroes of that time,” said O’Connell, who’s also written books on The Justice League’s Snyder Cut and Spider-Man’s cinematic history.

“I mean, he ran in a pack with (Sylvester) Stallone and (Arnold) Schwarzenegger, of course, but then like (Jean-Claude) Van Damme and Chuck Norris and all these guys, they were all coming up in the '80s and into the '90s. And I thought all those guys turned their action heroes into these sort of larger-than-life machines.

“And I thought Bruce, in all of his pictures, whether it was obviously the Die Hard franchise, but Fifth Element, he's a taxicab driver. Even in Last Boy Scout, he plays that sort of— I like the way he played wounded and an alcoholic, a burnout, usually divorced. I connected with that type of hero. I thought Mel Gibson did it great in first Lethal Weapon, being suicidal. I think that those type of damaged, flawed heroes are more interesting to me.

“So when I saw that Bruce would try to go out for those roles and try to bring that element to it, I found that to be really interesting. But also, I just connected with his sense of humor.

“I loved his sarcastic tone from Moonlighting. I loved what he brought to Death Becomes Her. I just thought he was really funny. There's a moment in the book where Kevin Smith, in an interview, compared early Bruce Willis to Bill Murray. And I was like, ‘God, that makes a lot of sense.’ That kind of Moonlighting, Blind Date-esque Bruce Willis could've very easily gotten on Bill Murray's career trajectory and then have become— if you take Bruce Willis at that time and drop him into Ghostbusters, it's not that much of a stretch. You could look at that and say, ‘Yeah, he could have done that.’”

So what’s Bruce Willis’ Mount Rushmore? O’Connell walks us through his thought process after re-watching a lot of Willis’ work as research for the book to narrow down his four best films.

“Unbreakable, to me, is interchangeable with Sixth Sense. It's one of the two of the first two (M. Night) Shyamalan’s,” O’Connell began his reasoning with. “I think Unbreakable is a better movie overall. But I mean, he's terrific in each of those. And that was one of the hardest things to do is to put that into print because of the finality of it.

“Die Hard and Pulp Fiction aren't going anywhere. Those two have to be in the conversation. I think the other two slots can be up for debate, and people can argue over the inclusion of a bunch of other ones. I think one of the Shyamalan’s has to be there. Sixth Sense or Unbreakable.

“And then for me, 12 Monkeys is just— I think that's his best performance. And I didn't think that going into [the book]. I didn't think that that movie was going to hit me as hard as it did. But when I revisited it for the purpose of this book, I was blown away by how good he is in that, like how stoic, how quiet, how grounded he is.

“It's a heady sci-fi premise, and Brad Pitt is chewing scenery left and right. And if Willis doesn't anchor at all, that movie goes off the rails. And so I was really, really impressed by what he did in that.”

There you have it, Bruce’s Mount Rushmore, according to Sean, is Unbreakable, Pulp Fiction, 12 Monkeys, and Die Hard.