Bruce Willis Characters Trivia Quiz

Answer: Die Hard

In "Die Hard," NYC police officer McClane (Willis) flew to Los Angeles to spend Christmas with his estranged wife and children. He went directly to his wife's office where a Christmas party was taking place, and before you could say "Yippee-Ki-Yay!" he found himself trying to prevent a group of seeming terrorists (who turned out to be nothing more than foreign thieves) from taking the staff and company executives hostage.

Willis scored a quadrifecta (I made that word up) with the original and three sequels in the John McClane franchise: "Die Hard" (1988), "Die Hard 2: Die Harder" (1990), "Die Hard With a Vengeance" (1995); and "Live Free or Die Hard" (2007).

Answer: The Sixth Sense

Child Psychologist Crowe was shot in his home by a former client who sobbed that Crowe had let him down; he hadn't helped him. After shooting his former therapist, the young man turned the gun on himself. Crowe then spent the rest of the film treating a little boy with similar psychological issues in the hope of shaking off his demons, so to speak.

The little boy's problem? He sees ghosts. Did you see Bruce's cameo in "Oceans Twelve" where he chatted up Julia Roberts (playing Tess Ocean, pretending to be Julia Roberts -- if you can follow that) about how many people had come up to him claiming they knew he was dead (in "Sixth Sense") long before the surprise ending? Yeah, right.

Answer: Look Who's Talking

Starring Kirstie Alley ("Mollie") and John Travolta ("James"), "Look Who's Talking" was Bruce's first voice-only film credit. This cute comedy's plot revolved around a single mother's desire that her love-child (Mikey) know his father (a married client of hers) or at least have a father-figure Mikey could look up to. Cab driver-pilot James entered the picture and despite his attempts to woo the new mother, the cabbie-pilot was relegated to babysitter for Mikey. James and Mikey got along so well that, as a baby then as a toddler, Mikey did all he could to push his mommy towards James and away from his biological father (George Segal). Mikey's thoughts as voiced by Willis provided most of the movie's laughs and an insight into what a baby might actually be thinking.

Answer: The Last Boy Scout

Although violent, I loved this movie for the dialog, especially between Bruce Willis and Damon Wayans. The latter played Jimmy Dix, a professional quarterback for the Dallas Stallions who had been ousted from the NFL for drug abuse. He was Joe Hallenbeck's idol until Dix "wasted his talent on coke." After Dix's girlfriend/Joe's client (Halle Berry) was killed, Dix became sidekick and second-banana (or is it "second dick"?) to Joe, who was hired to protect the dead girl and thus felt obligated to go after her killer. Taylor Negron was great as Milo, the bad guy with the sophisticated vocabulary.

Answer: Striking Distance

Directed by Randy Herrington, this action thriller's tagline was "They shouldn't have put him in the water if they didn't want him to make waves." His 'wave-making' referred to his outspoken belief that a cop was responsible for multiple murders of Pittsburgh women.

The women also happened to be Hardy's old girlfriends whose bodies were dumped in one of Pittsburgh's famous Three Rivers. Naturally, suspicion centered on Hardy. Sarah Jessica Parker played Jo Christman, an IAD cop assigned undercover as Hardy's partner.

As most women do, she quickly succumbed to the charms of Bruce Willis's Tom Hardy, and as they became romantically involved she switched from investigating him to joining him in his investigation to find the REAL killer.

Answer: Mercury Rising

In yet another "law enforcement officer" role, Bruce Willis was cast as an unpopular FBI agent who drew the short straw and was assigned to protect a nine year-old autistic boy named Simon (Mike Hughes). Based on a novel by Ryne Douglas Pearson (screenplay by Lawrence Konner), "Mercury Rising" also starred Alec Baldwin as the Bad Dude from NSA who ordered Simon killed.
If you haven't seen it, you're not the only one, but IMHO it's worth a look, especially if you're a Bruce Willis fan.

Answer: Twelve Monkeys

I'm normally not a fan of science fiction, but I made an exception for this film on the basis of its star power alone.
Cole (Willis) was a convict who lived in the future (2035). His caretakers/captors were scientists who had discovered that the mass reduction (99%) of the Earth's population was due to a virus released into the environment in the late 1990s. Cole, sent back in time to try to identify the source so the scientists could stop the virus from mutating, was mistakenly returned to 1990 instead of 1997 and branded a lunatic.
His foil (and eventual romantic interest -- quel surprise!) was psychiatrist Dr. Kathryn Railly (the husky-voiced Stowe). Brad Pitt played a cunning lunatic in an over-the-top performance that must have been a lot of fun for him.

Answer: Unbreakable

Another M. Night Shyamalan film (the arguably disappointing follow up to his "The Sixth Sense") teamed Bruce with Samuel L. Jackson again ("Die Hard With a Vengeance"). In this film, Bruce played a bored, uninspired security guard, lackluster husband to Audrey (Wright) and inattentive father to Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark). Jackson's character, Elijah Price, was a comics aficionado and art dealer who suffered from a disease rendering him physically and medically fragile. Elijah was the antithesis of David Dunne, and the former set out to determine if Dunne was a yin to his yang. Even though he was ultimately revealed to be evil, Elijah helped David find his true calling as an incognito superhero, which brought him the inner peace he had lacked, saved his marriage, and brought him closer to his son. I think this film had a fascinating and very creative premise, even though the critics ate it alive.

Answer: Pulp Fiction

Everyone complained about the brutality of "Pulp Fiction," and there certainly was that aspect to this film -- if not all of Quentin Tarantino's movies. But in "Pulp Fiction," Bruce Willis's character, the pugilist Butch, was just trying to get out alive with some cash; he didn't really want to hurt anyone. However, his decision NOT to throw the fight, as ordered by kingpin Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames) led to nothing but trouble.
Footnote: Samuel L. Jackson was also in this movie!

Answer: Armageddon

Another film bashed by the critics, "Armageddon" starred Willis, Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler (as Bruce's daughter, Grace), and a host of entertaining character actors including Steve Buscemi and Billy Bob Thornton. It indeed had an outrageous, unbelievable plot, but that's why they call it fiction! Oil drillers (led by Stamper) were recruited by the U.S. government to land on an asteroid inexorably headed toward Earth.

Their job: drill deep enough into the gigantic glob of iron and God-knows-what to drop an atomic device, then get the team out of Dodge, detonate the device, and save the world.

Despite losing a few men on the way, Stamper's team managed to complete the task, but the remote wasn't working properly, requiring someone to stay behind to detonate it by hand. Who drew the short straw?