In Richard Linklater’s film of Eric Schlosser’s McIndustry exposé, Willis has a cameo as the VP of fictional burger chain Mickey’s, who shrugs off the discovery that his restaurant’s patties contain faecal matter. Willis’s then-spouse Demi Moore is her bestie. Other bad-guy movie roles followed but Mortal Thoughts was his first: he plays a lout whose wife (Glenne Headly) plots his demise. In the same year, Willis was once again killed off quickly by a quality film-maker – Alan Rudolph this time (who later directed him in a jumbled 1999 adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions). You’ve heard of “Garbo Laughs!” Prepare for something almost as rare: “Willis Weeps!” 13. But what a way to go: Dustin Hoffman orders the execution, Steve Buscemi ties him up, Nicole Kidman looks on aghast. Robert Benton’s gangster yarn kicks off with Willis facing death in a bow tie and tux. At least he seems more at ease here than steeped in the whimsy of Wes Anderson (who cast him in the same year’s Moonrise Kingdom). The thrill of seeing Willis working with an exciting young director (Rian Johnson) in this time-loop thriller, in which he and Joseph Gordon-Levitt play the same assassin at different ages, was dulled only slightly by the fact that he had ridden that merry-go-round before in 12 Monkeys. ![]() ![]() What charm it has can be attributed solely to Willis, handling the wisecracks with aplomb as a former secret service agent turned private eye, and Damon Wayans as the ex-NFL star with whom he teams up. Misogyny runs through this nasty piece of action cinema from Lethal Weapon screenwriter Shane Black and the director of Top Gun, Tony Scott. (Post-9/11, Zwick was one of the Hollywood figures consulted by the Pentagon on counter-terrorism matters.) Rightly criticised for the insensitive handling of its Arab characters, the film has some fruitful tension between Denzel Washington, urging caution, and Willis, personifying gung-ho military might. Nearly three years before 9/11, writer-director Edward Zwick imagined a terrorist cell launching an attack on US soil. He reprised the role briefly in Split (2016) and at length in Glass (2019). There are shades of Christopher Walken in The Dead Zone in his portrayal of an ordinary Joe baffled by his extraordinary powers. ![]() In his second consecutive film with Shyamalan, Willis again produces moving results from portentous, low-grade material. Willis with Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense.
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