5 Awesome Performances
5. The Sixth Sense (1999)
Ah, I remember these days well. These were the days when M. Night Shamylan
didnt suck harder than a Swedish vacuum cleaner; the days when the young break-through director couldve still gone on to become the finest new Auter in town. You couldnt know it then of course, Sixth Sense was amongst his first features, but one of the major factors in what made people consider Shamylan a burgeoning Auter back then was his early and masterful deployment of Bruce Willis. Previously to The Sixth Sense, for the majority of his career (apart from a few exceptions) Willis was the action man still is, for the most part but with The Sixth Sense he managed to make me believe that he could actually be something much more given the right role. Its a bleak and tentative performance in a film with an incredible twist. The great thing about Willis performance here is, when you watch the film back, he plays the entire role with a sort of insightful sadness, as though his character already knows the truth but refuses to admit it to himself.