New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

David Mumpower: We're all over the place in our replies, which I believe reflects the fact that we were all over the place in our expectations for the film. Personally, I thought this looked like an abomination, making it no different from Willis' last film, Surrogates. That title earned only $38.6 million domestically, although it did well enough internationally to avoid being termed a disaster despite the hefty $80 million production budget. Was it profitable when it left theaters? No. A Couple of Dic...err, Cop Out cost only $37 million to make, and has opened $3.3 million higher than Surrogates. As such, it's a more successful project than his last one as well as one that will be profitable, as Calvin Trager indicated. Is that good enough? Therein lies the debate. I say yes...ish. A lot of that is because I've always been an ardent supporter of Kevin Smith, but this trailer made me want to cancel my cable/Internet subscriptions just to be safe from the horror of it. When a film like that makes money, I'm always impressed.

Maybe it's time for that Sixth Sense sequel...

Kim Hollis: Last week we asked how you quantify Leonardo DiCaprio's status as a movie star. This week, let's be equally ambiguous with our query. What do you consider to be the status of Bruce Willis's career?

Josh Spiegel: As I mentioned in the Cop Out section, Bruce Willis's star is as low as it can get. He's making a movie that Kevin Smith is directing as a gun-for-hire? Yowch. Willis had something of a comeback with his two starring roles in M. Night Shyamalan's first big movies, but he squandered that good will into mediocre movies like Hostage, Surrogates, and Cop Out. I like Willis too much to want him to stop making movies, but there's no question that his career as an action star should be over. That, in essence, is me saying that, as much as I love the series, no Die Hard 5, Bruce.





Michael Lynderey: Bruce Willis is still a mid-level star, someone who can deliver the occasional $100 million earner (Die Hard 4), while mostly sticking to something a little more moderate (Hostage or Surrogates). He's also certainly established himself as an excellent character actor - Fast Food Nation and especially Alpha Dog come to mind - and that's something he'll always have to fall back on if his star vehicle output slows down. Almost no actor maintains themselves as a top-tier movie star for over two decades, but Willis has pretty much done that, while diversifying his work load in a way that, say, Mel Gibson or Harrison Ford have not done. Basically, I think he's in an excellent position and I'm sure we'll see a lot more of him in the next 20 years - whether billed first or fourth.

Reagen Sulewski: You never want to say never with a guy who's previously once been one of the biggest stars in the world, but he's going to have to a lot better job of picking his scripts. The rumour that he chose Smith personally to direct this doesn't lend me confidence that he's making the best choices right now, and/or it tells me that he's just decided to have the most amount of fun making movies from here on out (which there's nothing wrong with, just people might not let you for long).

Continued:       1       2       3       4