DIE HARD
This is not just another action movie; this is the action movie. For Bruce Willis, it's the film that made his name, started an iconic franchise and provided almost all his most quotable moments over the course of his career. A relatable hero, the best villain in the business, set-pieces that still wow on the 42nd rewatch, it's a masterpiece of gung-ho, kick-ass cinema, and one that's not afraid to actually make sense.

12 MONKEYS
Zed may have been dead by the end of Pulp Fiction, but Tarantino's sophomore effort fails to show Bruce's real acting chops the way 12 Monkeys does. Somehow Brad Pitt got the movie's only Oscar nod, but there's no doubt about the excellence of Willis' work in Terry Gilliam's La Jetée-inspired time-travelling tale. Delivering flashes of brilliance throughout the film, Willis is aching nostalgically for 20th century music one moment and losing his rag the next. And though this Kafka-esque story of past, present and future may feel disorientating at first, if there's a Willis movie deserves a rewatch immediately afterwards, it's this one.

THE FIFTH ELEMENT
It's a fairly brutal fistfight between The Fifth Element and The Last Boy Scout in the Bruce Willis comedy stakes, but Luc Beeson's space-based holiday from hell just about pips it, if only for the lightness of tone. Gary Oldman is a frenzied delight, Chris Tucker a microphone-swinging maniac and Milla Jovovich an adorable, occasionally scantily clad naïf. But at the centre of Besson's sci-fi fever dream is Willis, delivering his dry, despairing lines beautifully as colours, lights and aliens explode around him in a genre-less, magical marvel of a movie.