The news of Bruce Willis’s retirement on health grounds brings its own special kind of sadness. Admittedly, he has been booking some dodgy films in the last year or so – I recently sat through a pretty sorry action thriller called Out of Death with Bruce in his comfort zone as the retired cop who has to take on a terrifying situation.
But even there, Willis’s coolly amiable, faintly contemptuous, always battle-ready presence sprinkled a little much-needed vinegar in the blandness. And so often in so many different kinds of film, Bruce Willis has been the wild card – or, actually, the trump card.
He has been the archetypal super-testosterone male-pattern baldness hombre, the guy who made wearing a vest – not a t-shirt, a vest – look iconic. Despite being the rebel with bullshit-detector on high alert, Bruce has often been cast as the authority figure. (When I first read PJ O’Rourke libertarian screed Republican Party Reptile, I thought of Willis.)
