Bruce Willis returns to our screens this week with his fifth outing as NYPD detective John McClane in A Good Day to Die Hard. Since the third film, Die Hard with a Vengeance, the series has gradually gravitated away from the singular premise of the first two films.

Initially, McClane had to stop the bad guys in a (relatively) fixed location in order to save his wife, but is now faced with scenarios that are often more ambitious (as with the third and fourth films), though if the early reviews for the fifth film are to be believed, occasionally more generic also.

Nevertheless, whether he wants to admit it or not, Willis has spent the bulk of his career playing John McClane; for every head-turning performance in the likes of Pulp Fiction and Looper, he’s got a couple of “grizzled cop/cabbie takes down bad guys against the odds” roles to his name.