Willis & McClane

By Matt Holmes /

Can you think of a major Hollywood star that in recent years has been phoning in so many half-assed performances, and is so obviously relying on former roles & screen persona's to earn a sweet pay-check, than Bruce Willis? Seriously, think about it. In the past decade (and be honest with yourselves), how many lead performances from the once great Hollywood risk-taker, who once upon a time wasn't afraid to step outside of the safe zone for smart genre fare like Unbreakable, Twelve Monkeys and The Fifth Element, have you actually enjoyed? How many have lived up to a '90's billed Bruce Willis feature? His Hartigan in Sin City; check. His aging John Wayne take on a retiring cop in 16 Blocks; yup. But outside of that it's mostly slight variations on John McClane and I'm sick to death of the predictability of it all.

Advertisement

(You'll probably be checking IMDB right now because you can't think of any other roles since, what, Unbreakable in 2000).

When Willis signs on to a movie these days it's a big case of "who cares, I won't be seeing it!". That's my predominant thought on the news from Deadline that Lionsgate/Millenium's Kane & Lynch video game adaptation is to film this August, with screenwriter Kyle Ward announcing via twitter that Jamie Foxx is to play Lynch.

Bruce Willis has been attached to play Kane since June 08.

Advertisement

Kane is "a mercenary who gets framed, and then is broken out of prison by his former mates, who've kidnapped his wife and daughter, and give him 72 hours to recover a doomsday device".

Simon Crane, the stunts guy on Willis' last movie The Surrogates, makes his directorial debut. Post that, Willis has Die Hard 5 probably gearing up for next year, of course. His 09' roles after the widely panned Cop Out are a one scene part in The Expendables, and a lead role in the admittedly awesome sounding Red; where we hope starring alongside the likes of Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren and Brian Cox may have inspired him to up his game. One can hope, right?