You can’t actually typecast Willis because in a moment, he can change the style of a film, armed with his irreverence, impishness, fallible invincibility, not to mention inate charm
Illustration/Uday Mohite
It is impossible to slot Bruce Willis as a mere ‘action star’. He is so far away from the Schwarzenegger-Stallone-Steven Segal-like, ‘punch punch pow pummel pulverise’ school of acting.
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From the moment his character John McClane in ‘Die Hard’ threw a dead body out of the Nakatomi Towers with that immortal ‘Yipee Ki Yay Mother Fu*%, line, he guaranteed that the action flick, would never be the same again—the franchise was set, and the genre took a small detour–it introduced the glib sense of humour to the repertoire of the action star.
(I call it ‘quip talking’, turning words on a page into wise cracks)
You can’t actually typecast Willis because in a moment, he can change the style of a film, armed with his irreverence, impishness, fallible invincibility, not to mention inate charm.
The principle is this—“This is me… I will light my unfiltered cigarette, squint my eyes, my lips will move a tad left or a tad right, to determine grin or grimace, and the lines that follow will be delivered with an unmatched brand of sardonic cool”.
Willis won’t go down as one of the finest actors of his generation, but like Harrison Ford, he knows exactly how to make cash registers ring.
While the DeNiros and Day Lewis’s, have ‘Method’ acted their way to histrionic greatness these two have John McClaned and Indiana Jonesed their path into classic cinema.
While DeNiro and Day Lewis imbibe the material, Willis ad-libs it.
For a man, known to be difficult to work with, Willis was in another league when he had an equally skilled craftsman or willing improviser working opposite him—Damon Wayans in The Last Boy Scout, Samuel L Jackson opposite him in ‘Die Hard with a Vengeance’, the banter, the buddy cop routine. And his on-screen chemistry with kids was exemplary—Haley Joel Osment, his co-star from Sixth Sense responded with this tweet on hearing of his hero’s condition—“It’s been difficult to find the right words for someone I’ve always looked upto—first on the big screen and then by some wild stroke of luck, in person. I’m so grateful for what I got to witness first hand. He is a true legend who has enriched all our lives for 25 years”.
Numerous copy-cat films have followed in the ‘one man against the baddies in a crammed space’ but they’ve always been ‘Die Hard on a ship/train/plane/skyscraper/in a stadium’ and never with an action hero who possessed so much cool and pizzazz.
Willis was always a tad vulnerable, his financials in a mess, his family affairs in an even bigger mess, his wife across movies about to leave him, and yet the realisation that he and only he could overpower the terrorists, or solve the titanic mess the country was in.
For an action star, Willis had a stillness I’ve rarely seen in actors, he worked well within himself, never strayed too far for what either he couldn’t or didn’t want to do, yet had enough acting chops for M Night Shymalan, to test his “surreal supernaturalism” on, in multiple films.
Bruce Willis has Aphasia, a condition that robs you of the ability to communicate, ironically, this was a characteristic across most of his roles—Willis was always the loner, those around him unable to understand how he thought and worked, always up against a system, always doing his job with that hint of understated joie de vivre.
Where Bruce Willis goes from here is an unsolved mystery. Sixty seven is too young an age to call it quits.
In the words of Shymalan, “He will always be that hero on the poster on my wall as a kid”.
In truth, he will always be that poster on all our walls as kids.
Yippee Ki Yay, Bruce Willis, happy trails.
Rahul daCunha is an adman, theatre director/playwright, photographer and traveller. Reach him at rahul.dacunha@mid-day.com
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