While it was not his first credited role, David Addison in the TV series Moonlighting was the role that shot Bruce Willis to superstardom in the 1980s! He became one of the most respected and loved Hollywood leading men and he was able to punch a bad guy in the face, shoot something and make it blow up, and do all the typical action hero stuff! However, Bruce Willis was an actor first and foremost, and even his most action packed movies had him delivering a believable performance!
Narrowing this list of the best Bruce Willis movies down to just ten was really tough, but each one of these showcases the best of Bruce Willis!
Unbreakable, David Dunn, 2000
Bruce Willis had already done great things with M. Night Shyamalan in the previous year in The Sixth Sense, but they teamed up again just one year later for the superhero movie, Unbreakable! Playing the role of David Dunn, Bruce Willis is a typical man, a father who just wants to do right by his son. However, it is revealed that he has super strength and that there is a sinister force at play trying to get the hero out of him. He is fantastic with both the insane Mr. Glass played by Samuel L Jackson, but it is the stuff with his son played by Spencer Treat Clark where he gets to show off those incredible acting muscles. Willis would get to reprise this role in 2016’s Split and 2019’s Glass.
Looper, Old David, 2012
Looper is one heck of a thrill ride and one of the best Bruce Willis movies from the later part of his career! This is the kind of movie that you have to pay attention to the whole time you are watching as it deals with time travel. In this movie, in the future the big crime syndicate sends victims back to the past to be killed, the killers are called “loopers”. The twist in this movie is that Bruce Willis plays the role of Old David from the future who goes back in time to stop the younger version of himself, played by Joseph Gorden Levitt from killing him! This is wild and awesome sci-fi stuff at its very best and it has a truly mind blowing and thrilling ending!
Die Hard: With a Vengeance, John McClane, 1995
Many people thought that Die Hard was done after Die Hard II, but Bruce Willis and John McClane would be back in 1995 with Die Hard: With a Vengeance. This is a very underrated movie that sees Bruce Willis matching wits with a terrorist played by Jeremy Irons who has planted bombs all over New York. What really makes this movie is that John McClane teams up with a man called Zeus, a regular Joe who gets pulled into this! Zeus is played by Samuel L. Jackson and these two men have incredible chemistry together. A neat bit of trivia about this is that a year later, Die Hard Trilogy the video game would come out and at the time the way the blood would splatter over the car windshield was one of the goriest things we had seen in a video game!
The Fifth Element, Korben Dallas, 1997
Get your multi pass ready as here we have one of the best sci-fi movies that the 90s has to offer, you could even argue that this is the best movie the legendary Luc Benson made! In this sci-fi classic, Bruce Willis plays the role of a taxi driver called Korben who ends up with Milla Jovovich’s Leeloo falling into it. This is weird, but it gets weirder as the two of them end up on an epic quest to find four stones so that they can save the galaxy from an evil threat! The Fifth Element is just awesome in every regard and the kind of movie, you have to be glued to while you are watching it as it would be so easy to get lost. Also, while this was not the first movie for Mila Jovovich, it was the one that made her a star.
Moonrise Kingdom, Captain Sharp, 2012
Next up we have one that may surprise some people, but there is no way that Moonrise Kingdom could be kept off this 10 best Bruce Willis movies list! This is a fantastic and very, very underrated coming of age movie about a young boy and girl who make a pact to run away together. Well, this does not go as planned and before long the scouts, the girl’s parents, and Bruce Willis’s Captain Sharp are trying to find these kids and bring them home. This is a movie that will make you smile and also break your heart. It is a story of young love and finding who you are. What is so great about Bruce Willis is that while he is a macho tough guy, Bruce Willis is also able to play a loving, dad-like character too and that is exactly what he is here. By the way, Moonrise Kingdom has an absolutely stacked ensemble cast and it is well worth checking out if you have not seen it already.
12 Monkeys, James Cole, 1995
Here we have another fantastic sci-fi movie from the 90s, 12 Monkeys. Starring alongside Brad Pitt whose star was really on the rise at this time and Madeline Stowe. 12 Monkeys is a sci-fi thriller that sees mankind in the future having to live underground after a manmade virus has wiped out most of the population. James Cole is serving a jail sentence, but he was given the chance to go back in time to try and find the source of the virus so some kind of vaccine can be made in the future. This is some real mind bending stuff and certainly, the kind of movie that may take a couple of watches to figure it all out.
Sin City, John Hartigan, 2005
Sure, Sin City may be known for the gyrating of Jessica Alba, but Bruce Willis plays a very important part in this movie! This is a very cool, stylish, and slick crime thriller based on the iconic comic book series by Frank Miller who actually co-directed the movie with Robert Rodriguez. This is an anthology style movie and Bruce Willis’s John Hartigan is one of the most important characters as he is a detective who is going head to head with the gross “Yellow Bastard” which actually takes up two segments of this movie. There are so many great performances in this movie, but Hartigan going up against That Yellow Bastard is easily one of the highlights.
Pulp Fiction, Butch Coolidge, 1994
We go from one anthology style movie to another with 1994’s Pulp Fiction. This is a Tarantino classic for sure. Famous for its interesting way of presenting the story out of order. This is one of the most iconic Bruce Willis roles for sure! Butch is an old boxer who has been hired by gangster Marsellus Wallace to throw a fight. Something he does not do which puts him in the crosshairs of the gangster. You could argue that Butch is one of the better characters in the movie and really the only character who gets a happy ending! Not only this is a great movie and a great role for Willis. Pulp Fiction was a very, very important movie for Bruce Willis as he had a few misses at the box office before this and this certainly gave his star a nice coating of polish.
The Sixth Sense, Malcolm Crowe, 1999
Do not worry, there will be no cheesy “I see dead people” puns here. This is the movie that put M Night Shyamalan on the map for sure! This is a tense thriller where Bruce Willis plays the role of a child psychologist who ends up working with a young boy called Cole, who is played by Haley Joel Osment. Cole tells Malcolm that he can see dead people and Malcolm tries to help him with this. This is the movie that pretty much made it so that every M Night Shyamalan movie had to have an epic twist! This is not your action hero Bruce Willis! Here he plays a much more somber, softer speaking role and he has this real sadness in his eyes. It is a truly amazing performance and one of the best Bruce Willis movies of all time!
Die Hard, John McClane, 1988
Come on, there was only one movie that could finish this best Bruce Willis movies list with and that is the 80s action classic, Die Hard! Bruce Willis was already a star before Die Hard, but this is the movie that made him a megastar for the next few years! There are so many iconic moments in this movie from the bloody feet to the Yippee-Ki-Yay to Hans Gruber taking a dive off the roof! Die Hard is truly one of the greatest action movies of the 80s and John McClane is one of the most iconic characters of any action movie series. This is easily the role that Bruce Willis is most known for and it was fun getting to see him reprise this role in the later part of his career. Of course, it is also fun to debate with people if Die Hard is or is not a Christmas movie!
So there you have it, the best Bruce Willis movies of all time and to be honest, there were at least another 5 to 10 that could have made this list. Bruce Willis is a Hollywood icon and it is such a shame that his health has taken a sad turn for the worse in his later years. However, there is no denying the legacy that this man has built in the movie industry! If you want to pay tribute to one of the greatest action stars of all time, let out a Yippee-Ki-Yay and watch any one of the movies on this best Bruce Willis roles list!
