Breach (2022)

Maintaining an acting career is tough. Only a handful of actors become big enough draws that their starring roles last for decades. Many burn bright for a small amount of time then fade from the cultural conscience. Maybe they took smaller roles. Maybe they decided to step away from acting. Or maybe they weren’t the box office draw they once were, and were relegated to starring in projects that were off the beaten path. Headlining mainstream, theatrical movies as the star for more than a few years is extremely difficult for an actor to do.

In recent years, there have been other outlets for actors to pursue as they try to keep working. The quality of television has steadily been on the rise with cable networks like HBO, AMC, and FX pushing for shows with bigger budgets and better story focus. Streaming services have produced quality output in terms of movies and series to stand out among the various other outlets. Even direct-to-video movies have seen a jump from the low-quality cash-ins or lower budget flicks with no backing. Those kinds of movies still exist, but they typically make for better entertainment now than they did back in the day. The advancements in technology and the slow decline of theatrical variety led to some better quality fare going elsewhere.

As those other outlets became better respected, actors who didn’t have the same box office cache they used to turned to these other places to continue their careers. There have been actors who embraced roles in these kinds of projects. Nicolas Cage and Eric Roberts are regulars in the non-theatrical market. They’ve racked up a bunch of credits, particularly over the past few years, that haven’t been in theatrical fare. Sure, occasionally they pop up on the big screen. Most of the time, though, their careers are relegated elsewhere.

Another actor who jumped off the big screen and took roles through these other avenues was Bruce Willis. Yes, I should note that the jump was likely because of his health issues. He couldn’t take on the bigger, meatier roles because he had aphasia, which made it difficult to communicate. Imagine learning and memorizing a bunch of dialogue with a disease that makes language difficult. Imagine taking cues from a director or explaining character motivation with that same issue. The direct-to-video stuff he took on was much less extensive when it came to the amount of work he did.

A good example was this week’s movie, Breach. Bruce Willis was in it, and he was the big name that they used to sell it to audiences, but he wasn’t the main character. Sometime in the future, a plague overtook Earth. The few healthy people who were left boarded a spaceship headed for “New Earth,” a planet being terraformed to sustain human life. Leading the ship was military man Admiral Adams (Thomas Jane), who also took his pregnant daughter Hayley (Kassandra Clement). Hayley’s boyfriend, Noah (Cody Kearsley) snuck on board and posed as a janitor so he could join the voyage and be with his girlfriend and their unborn child. Most people on the ship were placed in a cryosleep, while a select few janitors, engineers, doctors, and military personnel remained awake to maintain the ship during its voyage. Along the way, Noah and his new supervisor, Clay (Bruce Willis), discovered an alien parasite bent on ending humanity by killing everyone on board. They needed to stop it.

As you can see, Bruce Willis was the top secondary character in Breach. Most of the movie was spent with Noah as he saw things on the ship grow increasingly strange. Until about the halfway point, that is, when everyone found out about the alien parasite and spent the rest of the movie trying to stop it. Noah was the rookie janitor, working his first job during the trip. Clay was his superior, the grizzled janitorial veteran who only showed up in the first half when he had to bark orders to Noah. Otherwise, he was practically non-existent. His role was beefed up in the second half when he and Noah led the charge on stopping the alien.

This was clearly a step down for Bruce Willis. I wouldn’t say it was a step down in quality. Most people would, but I wouldn’t. I quite enjoyed Breach. I thought it was a decent action horror movie. It was a step down from Bruce Willis’s normal roles. He was typically the hero of the movie. He was the main character of most of his movies. Yet, in Breach, he was the secondary hero. He wasn’t the main character. This was the level of role he typically took when he wasn’t starring in action movies. In a movie like Moonrise Kingdom, yeah, sure, he’d take a smaller supporting role. But action was his domain. He was John McClane. It was really his shift to direct-to-video in 2015 that he eased off on being the lead actor.

Through many of his direct-to-video roles, Bruce Willis took on the role of mentor, father figure, villain, family friend, or detective in the b-story. He was no longer the action star. This allowed him, with his aphasia, to have fewer lines in any given production. He didn’t need to always be the focus of the story, so there was less work for him to do. Instead of being in almost every scene, like John McClane in most of the Die Hard movies, he could come in and out of the movie to support the main character’s journey. Sometimes, he didn’t even show up until well into the runtime. In Breach, it took ten or fifteen minutes for Bruce Willis to show up, when he would typically show up as soon as any of his theatrical movies began.

The other thing that shifting his career to direct-to-video did was twofold. First, it allowed Bruce Willis to make a few more movies before he was forced to retire earlier this year. More movies released meant more money. If he was nearing retirement, he would need the extra money to support himself going forward. Secondly, it could get more of these movies made. It is hard enough for the producer of a direct-to-video movie to find financing and get things off the ground. Having the addition of a well-known actor could push a movie up to the financial backing it needs to fully achieve the director’s vision. Yes, Breach featured people like Cody Kearsley and Thomas Jane, but Bruce Willis was a bigger name than either of them. Even if Tom Jane played The Punisher at one point. Bruce Willis was the face that could be biggest slapped on DVD and VOD art.

To sum all of that up, Bruce Willis was diagnosed with aphasia. I don’t know when, but it seems clear that his grasp on language had been fading for a few years. He shifted his career from starring in theatrical movies to, mostly, playing supporting roles in a bunch of direct-to-video movies. It was a necessity due to his newfound disability being in the way of performing as well as he once did. Many of the movies were poorly received, with his performances being a sticking point. We didn’t know about his aphasia five years ago. We found out when he retired earlier this year.

I would say that, based on Breach, he was still putting in good performances now and again. His performance as Clay kind of fit the character perfectly. He was a disconnected former military man going through the motions as an aged janitorial supervisor. It was very much in line with how people saw him as an actor. He was disconnected from his craft, in many instances, and simply going through the motions. There were moments where the bravado of the Bruce Willis of the 90s came through. A little bit of that Hudson Hawk cockiness. And that’s where I think he may have done the best he could. Maybe I wouldn’t have thought this two years ago, or even two months ago. Or maybe I would. I was never as negative on Bruce Willis as other people got over the past decade.

As for everything else in Breach, it was a derivative story that played out in an entertaining way. I had a blast watching it. Sure, it took me a while to figure out I knew Cody Kearsley because he played Moose in Riverdale. Yeah, there was a guy who, from certain angles, looked just like Matthew McConaughey. And, of course, the story was very much just The Thing mixed with zombies on a spaceship. I get that it might not be everybody’s cup of tea. But I had a good time. That’s all that matters to me at this point. Would I watch it again? Hell yeah.

Bruce Willis was one of many actors who have found projects outside of the typical theatrical movies. Not all of them went the direct-to-video route. Adam Sandler took his talents to Netflix and has been pumping out movies for the streaming service for seven years now. Sure, he had some theatrical movies like the Hotel Transylvania movies and Uncut Gems mixed in there. For the most part, however, he remained a Netflix guy. Kevin Bacon turned to television with roles in The Following, I Love Dick, City on a Hill, and the upcoming horror series They/Them. Eric Roberts agreed to work on almost anything he was asked to work on, putting him in all kinds of things. Each was a big theatrical star at one point who found green pastures in other avenues as well.

Being a superstar actor is a tough thing in the modern day. Well, it is if you only think of stardom in terms of theatrical output and box office draw. The thing is, that’s not the only way to calculate how big a star an actor is. With direct-to-video flicks finding better financing and quality, television becoming much more respected, and streaming services throwing their hats into the ring, major stardom can come from any direction. An actor could become a huge hit thanks to a television show or a streaming movie. They could put out some respectable direct-to-video stuff between two theatrical movies. There are many options for where an actor’s career could go, and every option could help build or keep their stardom. All mediums are getting better and it’s only a matter of time before they’re seen for what they truly are: extensions of the same art form.

Now let’s get to some notes:

• I mentioned Hudson Hawk (week 232) earlier in the post.
• Ralf Moeller made his fourth Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance in Breach. His other appearances were Batman & Robin (week 138), Far Cry (week 364), and The Scorpion King (week 380).
• Rachel Nichols was in Breach. She was also in AlexCross (week 12).
• Johnny Messner has appeared in both Breach and Anacondas: Hunt for the Blood Orchid (week 80).
• I’ve already mentioned Hudson Hawk (week 232), which featured Bruce Willis long before he was in Breach.
• Johann Urb returned from The Hottie and the Nottie (week 395) for Breach.
• Finally, Breach wasn’t Thomas Jane’s first Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance. That honour went to Money Plane (week 437).
• Have you seen Breach? What did you think of it? Good or bad? How do you feel about Bruce Willis’s late career DTV work? Let me know your thoughts on Twitter or in the comments.
• Feel free to drop some suggestions of movies I should check out, too. I’m always open to movies I might not otherwise know. Twitter is a good place to find me. Or just drop the movie in the comments.
• Check out Sunday “Bad” Movies on Instagram for trailers and stuff. Mostly trailers.
• And that brings this post to a close. The only thing left to do is to quickly preview next week’s movie. It’s a fun one. Imagine the movie Jaws. Now remove the shark. Toss a lawnmower in its place. Now relocate the movie from a beach town to a golf course. That’s what Blades is, and that’s what I’ll be watching for next week’s post. Join me, will you?