Bruce Willis is dusting off his best sardonic smirk and lacing up his finest murderous one-liners, in preparation for putting his battered body and comic charisma through yet another action-comedy role. The Die Hard star has signed on for an as-yet-untitled film that will be the first directorial effort from Cop Out writers Mark and Robb Cullen. This, despite the fact that re-teaming with anybody from one of 2010’s least-loved buddy comedies is exactly the sort of shit that everyone involved seems like they’re getting far too old to do.
The new film will see Willis play a private investigator living in Venice Beach, California, who gets drawn into a kooky web of criminal malfeasance when someone kidnaps his dog. If that kind of sounds like the plot of The Big Lebowski, except with an animal in the place of room-defining floor furniture, then it remains to be seen what Willis’ giant slab of a face can do in the place of the endlessly expressive Jeff Bridges.
Meanwhile, Willis’ Die Hard With A Vengeance co-star, Jeremy Irons, is also getting in on the quip-and-killing game, appearing with Virginia Madsen in the upcoming Monumental. Irons will be playing a wise-cracking Vietnam vet, kidnapped by a pair of bumbling criminals played by Rory Culkin and AnnaSophia Robb. The trio is pursed by Madsen’s FBI agent, in an “epic journey” that “culminates in a fiery showdown,” presumably while Irons rolls his eyes at the camera and describes the chaos with a withering British put-down.