Once upon a time, Bruce Willis was one of the biggest stars out there, able to pick and choose whichever projects he liked thanks to a solid track record at the box office ever since Die Hard first put him on the Hollywood A-list. Nowadays, though, the 65 year-old’s star is not shining anywhere near as bright.
In recent years, he more often than not finds himself sleepwalking through dull roles and can usually be found slumming it in C-level action movies that typically skip theaters. In fact, Willis has made about twenty films in the last five years alone, and only a small handful of them have seen the inside of a cinema. Let that sink in for a moment.
Out of those, two were his small cameos in Split and The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part, and three were Rock the Kasbah, Death Wish and Motherless Brooklyn, not of which performed particularly well, leaving M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass as his only real successful outing since 2013’s triple-whammy of A Good Day to Die Hard, G.I. Joe: Retaliation and Red 2.
Perhaps one of his most embarrassing recent films though is 2018’s Acts of Violence, which just arrived on Netflix on August 1st. For some reason, it almost instantly became popular with viewers and now, it’s one of the most-watched movies on the platform, currently sitting in the number 10 spot on the Top 10 list. Which means it’s the tenth most-watched film on the streaming site right now. Again, we’ll let that sink in as well.
What could be accounting for all the love it’s seeing? We couldn’t possibly say, as it really is a terrible movie with little to no redeeming qualities. If you’ve never heard of it, Acts of Violence follows “a police detective (Willis) investigating a kidnapping that eventually uncovers human trafficking.” The plot is as generic as that description makes it sound and at the time of its release, critics tore it apart, calling it an “ugly,” “creepy” and “tacky” film. Ouch.
But apparently Netflix users feel differently. And for the time being, at least, this forgettable Bruce Willis effort remains one of the platform’s most-watched movies.
