The Only Bruce Willis Movies That Rotten Tomatoes Considers Fresh

Prior to his retirement, Bruce Willis had been entertaining audiences for over 40 years. With his IMDb page showing 150 projects under his belt, there are bound to be some massive successes, and there are bound to be some gigantic failures. There are different ways to measure those successes and failures, but Rotten Tomatoes decides to have audiences and critics deem a film Fresh or Rotten. For Willis, 22 of his 150 films land on the website as Certified Fresh. To be deemed Fresh, a film has to have 60% of critics rule it so. So three of every five critics need to like the movie and give it the metaphorical thumbs-up.

Of course, audiences may disagree with the critics on occasion. There are plenty of occasions where critics call a movie Rotten even though the film totally rocks. Everything from hard hitters like "Die Hard" and "The Expendables 2," to animated adventures like "Over the Hedge" and "Beavis and Butt-Head Do America" make the Fresh list. All the while, great films like "Armageddon," "The Last Boy Scout," and "Death Becomes Her" dropped below the mark.

Now that Willis has tragically been forced to walk away from acting due to a dementia diagnosis, we look back on a career of films that will make you say, "Yippie Ki-Yay!" Here are the 22 movies that the critics deem Certified Fresh and a handful that just missed the mark.

Let's start with Bruce Willis' most famous role — his legacy character, John McClane. Overall, critics believe "Die Hard" is a Fresh franchise. Three of the five films in Willis' iconic series made the cut, while one barely missed the mark, and the fifth ...  well, the fifth fell far short. According to a round-up on Rotten Tomatoes, here is where they landed. 

"Die Hard" put Willis on the map in 1988, arguably changing the face of action movies everywhere. Willis wasn't a hulking action star like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone or a martial artist like Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal, or Jean-Claude Van Damme. Instead, he was the everyman, and critics and audiences alike responded to him. The first movie gave him his top-rated critic score of 94%. The follow-up to that film, "Die Hard 2: Die Harder," landed in 1990 with a 70% critic score. Then the fourth one, "Live Free or Die Hard," hit the screens in 2007 with an 82%.

It is a travesty that the third film in the franchise, "Die Hard with a Vengeance," barely missed the mark with 58%. Dropping in 1995 and adding bitter New Yorker Jesus (Samuel L. Jackson) to the mix to face off against Simon (Jeremy Irons) was likely the most fun you could have in an action movie that year ("Heat" and "Desperado" could give it a run for its money for sure). The most recent film, "A Good Day to Die Hard," released in 2013 to a dreadful 15%, effectively killing the franchise.

Now for the best movies, according to critics, not carrying the "Die Hard" title. 1994 and 2012 were big years for Bruce Willis as all four films that scored in the 90s, along with "Die Hard," were released in one of those two years.

1994 saw one of the most iconic movies of the decade, and maybe a few decades after it, "Pulp Fiction." Not only was it a big moment for Willis, who played Butch, but it was also a significant career moment for Samuel L. Jackson, Ving Rhames, Uma Thurman, and John Travolta. It became one of Quentin Tarantino's most popular films, and it makes sense how it landed as one of Willis' top movies of his career. That same year also saw him team up with Paul Newman, Jessica Tandy, and Melanie Griffith in "Nobody's Fool." The former film scored a 92% from the critics, while the latter landed a 91%.

2012 saw his other two films in the score bracket, both landing a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes. "Moonrise Kingdom" linked Willis with some of the best talent in Hollywood with Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Frances McDormand, and Tilda Swinton, and was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the 85th Academy Awards. He also starred in the sci-fi action film, "Looper," which pitted him against himself, a younger version played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and also featured a fierce Emily Blunt.

Other than the second-highest "Die Hard" on the list, "Live Free or Die Hard," there were only two other films in Bruce Willis' filmography that landed a score in the 80s. And they were both mind melters. In contrast to the fourth installment of his John McClane legacy that pits him against Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant) and Mai (Maggie Q) with the help of Matt (Justin Long) and his now-grown daughter, Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), the other two films saw him facing off against entirely different kinds of villains.

The first mind melter in the 80s score bracket is "12 Monkeys," scoring an 88%. The film sees Willis playing a convict named James Cole, who is sent back in time from 2035 to the 1990s to try and prevent a viral outbreak that kills a large portion of the human population. There are twists and turns and Brad Pitt, and everything you could want from a science fiction thriller.

Then there is 1999's "The Sixth Sense" coming in with 86%. This groundbreaking film saw Willis' Malcolm Crowe, a child psychologist, surviving a home invasion before working with nine-year-old Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment). The film's climax is one of the most famous movie endings when Cole, who had been seeing deceased people, reveals that Crowe had been dead all along. It was one of the twists that made M. Night Shyamalan a star and gave us one of the most famous movie lines ever in "I see dead people."

The 70s seem to be where Bruce Willis makes his money, as nearly half of the Fresh films in his filmography float around that bracket. Of the eight films where he has a score in the 70s, two of them are animated with his roles in "Beavis and Butt-Head Do America" and "Over the Hedge," and one was the last of his Fresh "Die Hard" films with "Die Hard 2: Die Harder."

One of the most prominent films in the 70s for Willis is his science fiction classic, "The Fifth Element." The film saw him as a down-on-his-luck cab driver and former special operator tasked with finding what others called the fifth element, only to find out it was in the form of an alien woman, Leeloo (Milla Jovovich). He navigates the villainous Zorg (Gary Oldman) to get the elemental stones and Leeloo in place to save the planet, with the help of Ruby Rhod (Chris Tucker). It brought in 71% on Rotten Tomatoes and became a cult classic in the years since.

The other four films in the 70s include another M. Night Shyamalan film, "Unbreakable," a team up with Morgan Freeman and John Malkovich, "R.E.D.," and two Robert Rodriguez films. A cool Grindhouse throwback called "Planet Terror," and the adaptation of a Frank Miller work called "Sin City."

The last handful of films in Bruce Willis' Fresh list on Rotten Tomatoes is filled with some lower-budget unknowns and one giant explosion of bullets, bombs, and cameos. While the 60s are the lowest-rated films to be still considered Fresh, there are some really good picks in here if you want to have a quiet movie night at home.

The biggest film that scored in the 60s came in the form of Sylvester Stallone's big-budget sequel to his action franchise, "Expendables 2." The sequel saw the return of the Expendables team consisting of Barney Ross (Stallone), Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), and more as they go head to head with Vilain (Jean-Claude Van Damme). Willis plays Church, an assumed CIA stooge who appears briefly in the first to give them their mission but gets to get his hands dirty this time around.

Another great pick from the list of 60s is "Hart's War," following Lt. Hart (Colin Farrell) as he is taken to a POW camp in World War II. While in the camp, he comes face to face with a racial controversy as a black soldier (Terrence Howard) is put on trial for the murder of another soldier (Cole Hauser). Willis plays the highest-ranking American prisoner and leads the cast through the twists and turns of the story. Also included in the list of 60s are "Mortal Thoughts," "Bandits," "Motherless Brooklyn," and "In Country."

If you have a love/hate relationship with Rotten Tomatoes or just a hate relationship, you may want to check out some of the movies that the critics didn't score as Fresh, but the audiences loved. Here are four movies that just missed the mark but audiences received much better. The first two are "Armageddon," which the critics scored a 43%, but audiences loved at 73%. And we could never leave out "Die Hard with a Vengeance," which just barely missed with a 58%, but fans didn't forget it by giving it an 83%.

One of the tragically underscored films by the critics in Bruce Willis' career came in 2006 with "Lucky Number Slevin." The film sees Willis, an assassin paid by the two top criminal bosses in the city, The Boss (Morgan Freeman) and The Rabbi (Sir Ben Kingsley), to kill the other. Instead, he manipulates Slevin (Josh Hartnett) into doing the job, only for the audience to discover there is more to all of them than meets the eye. The film got a 51% from the critics, but fans found much more to like, scoring it an 87%.

Finally, "Death Becomes Her" is a dark comedy that saw Willis play Dr. Ernest Menville. As a coroner, he is manipulated by two women who compete for his attention not because they love him but because they hate each other. Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn turn in incredible performances as competing lovers who discover immortality. The critics scored it a 55%, while the audience found more charm in it by scoring it a 61%. Willis may have 22 films the critics saw as Fresh, but fans seem to have found more to love.