Maybe Willis is like Michael Caine- that is, he likes money and he likes working steadily, and will take practically any offer, rather than risk being idle and unpaid for months/years.
Every prolific actor has a few “straight to video” projects under his belt. The difference now is that they aren’t sitting in a dusty corner of the video rental place; they are at the top of Netflix’s “just added” list.
Why? For $12 you got to see one of the best movies ever. (With the possible exception of the first Die Hard, probably the best of Mr Willis’s)
This is my understand for Willis. He shows up to crap movies, does pretty much everything he can in a couple days, and then goes off to do the movies he really wants to do, like Moonrise Kingdom.
Hudson Hawk was enjoyable kitsch. It’s “Color of Night” I want my time back for.
ETA: And “Striking Distance”.
These days I’m half expecting him to be announced as the new Doctor Who.
Remember Joaquin Phoenix!
FWIW my post was mostly tongue in cheek and a warning to not bother with the garbage heap (and apparently Bruce Willis napping opportunity) Vice but to your point I would say that Bruce Willis strikes me as an actor who has enough clout and power to not allow anything on screen he doesn’t want to be assuming he cares enough about it. Actors of his stature normally can get a stamp of approval on the direction and have a pet writer that works on every script they do. Again, if he cared. Versus just having a boat payment to make as was the case here.
They normally get to tell the studio to banish a movie? Where do you get that idea? As I said above, lots of big actors have some straight to video movies.
Nicolas Cage, for instance, outbid Leonardo DiCaprio for a dinosaur skull, which he later had to forfeit to the Mongolian government.
Some actors know they’re making bad movies but do it for the money. Nicolas Cage and Michael Caine fall in this category.
But what I’ve heard is that there are some actors who just don’t have any taste. They can’t tell the difference between a good movie and a bad movie. So they have no idea whether the movie they’re making is any good until it’s seen by an audience and critics. Bruce Willis is one of these. Sean Connery and Burt Reynolds are two others.
No what I’m saying is there are some actors that are high enough on the food chain that if they are in a crap movie it’s because they didn’t care.
I hate it when that happens.
I don’t think that’s true. Actors usually have a different skill set and purpose than that requires. Is it really so obvious that Die Hard is going to be a fan favorite lone wolf action flick and Hudson Hawk is a going to be an unloved caper movie just from the script and attached director? How much of a salary you command isn’t directly correlated with your success predictions. But humour me, which high food chain actor has never been in a crap movie?
He should just stick with making music.
Six Movies, One Expression!
He does appear in the movies, but he clearly does not pose for the posters. He just sells a stock photo. He spent one day taking 25+ serious looks and signs off on them being used when he agrees to do the movie.
Coming soon in a Death Wish remake/ reboot.
Who wants to see this 
?
Or, quite possibly, the movie idea looked good but the execution sucked. For example, the movie Vice has what looks like a decent plot (from reading Wikipedia). Brand new and exciting? Not really, but it could make a decent movie.
By the time the movie is shot and the money spent, the odds of killing it would probably be low. Better to release it and recoup some money, at least from the producers point of view.
Slee
By the way, that 6-pack included Hostage.
I liked that movie quite a bit, actually.