Most Phoned-In Performance: Bruce Willis In Everything
Coming off the back of an excellent 2012, in which he provided two of his best performance in years in Looper and Moonrise Kingdom, Bruce Willis fell all-too-comfortably back into his wheelhouse this year. Despite recently claiming to be 'bored' of action movies (also saying he does them for the paycheck, like we didn't know), Willis appeared in three action movies in 2013, all of which were sequels, and seemingly sleepwalked through all of them. First up was A Good Day to Die Hard in February, which further crapped all over the legacy of the franchise and made (the underrated but still not as good as the first three) Live Free or Die Hard look like a minor classic by comparison. Completely ignoring everything that made John McClane one of action cinema's greatest characters, he becomes yet another indestructible protagonist as Willis scowls his way through a humourless, formulaic series of evermore ridiculous and CGI-augmented set-pieces. The following month, he provided support in GI Joe: Retaliation as General Joe Colton and gave the impression he was bored more than anything else, going through the motions and struggling to generate any chemistry with his fellow cast-mates. Finally, in July came RED 2, which saw the older generation of super-spies set off an a globetrotting MacGuffin hunt, with Willis' uninterested performance being comfortably overshadowed by John Malkovich, Helen Mirren and Anthony Hopkins. You didn't need to say you were bored of action movies Bruce, we could tell by watching these three movies. Hopefully next year's Sin City: A Dame to Kill For brings a return to form, as his performance in the 2005 original was fantastic. Runner-Up: The Wolfpack - The Hangover: Part III A mere four years after The Hangover became one of the biggest sleeper hits ever, the closing chapter saw the main characters go through the motions in a comedy that broke from the franchise template, yet forgot to be funny. Allocating far, far too much screen-time to Ken Jeong's Chow, Part III sets itself out as a dark comedy, yet the main trio seem to be on autopilot, especially Bradley Cooper who doesn't even seem like he wants to be there. He's a serious actor now, remember. After the sequel basically remade the original movie, everybody wanted the third chapter to break from the formula. It did, and the result was a huge disappointment, hindered by the hugely talented main trio sleepwalking through their signature roles.
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