GASOLINE ALLEY
(director/writer: Edward Drake; screenwriter: Tom Sierchio; cinematographer: Brandon Cox; editor: Justin Williams; music: Scott Currie; cast: Bruce Willis(Det. Freeman), Luke Wilson (Det. Vargas), Devon Sawa (Jimmy Jayne), Kat Foster (Christine), Sufe Bradshaw (Eleanor Rogers), Kenny Wormald (Dennis Bourke), Irina Antonenko (Star), Angie Pack (Det. Cassandra Vargas, ex-wife), Ash Adams (Frank Flosso), Johnny Dowers (Erasmus Alcindor), Rick Solomon (Percy Muleeney), Vernon Davis (Kaiser the Bouncer), Billy Jack Harlow (Roy), Tracy Curry (Dr Feelgood); Runtime: 97; MPAA Rating: R; producers; Tom Sierchio, Corey Large: Saban; 2022)
“Doesn’t make sense.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz.
A low-grade action pic directed by Edward Drake (“American Siege “/”Apex”) and starring Bruce Willis that doesn’t make sense. It’s co-written by Drake and Tom Siercho. The title is derived from a tattoo parlor owned by the ex-con Jimmy Jayne (Devon Sawa).
In Los Angeles, after the murder of Star (Irina Antonenko) and several other hookers in a hotel room, LAPD detectives Freeman (Bruce Willis and Vargas ( Luke Wilson) arrest the former con artist Jimmy, now reformed, for their murders after finding on Star a lighter with the name of Jimmy’s place on it. Jimmy had just met her in a bar and offered her a job in his place and gave her the lighter.
We find out that Jimmy’s mom was a hooker and her cop husband had a nervous breakdown trying to find her when she vanished.
The innocent Jimmy figures he’ll get no break from the cops, so he conducts his own search for whoever was the guilty party.
His investigation leads him to the porno movie star Percy Muleene (Rick Solomon) and one of his writers, Erasmus Alcindor (Johnny Dowers), a struggling singer named Eleanor (Sufe Bradshaw) and a loose-tongued bodyguard named Kaiser (Vernon Davis).
What follows is that this Hollywood clique’s involvement in the crimes is revealed, after a shoot-out comes about.
None of it is too exciting, as it looms as just another run-of-the- mill thriller. The big name star, Willis, does little but phone in his performance to sell his name for a big paycheck, while Sawa does all the heavy- lifting-his personality goes from being gentle to a maniac filled with a killer’s rage.
The blandness of the story is what kills it, as the paint-by-numbers execution makes for a disposable film that’s easily forgotten.
REVIEWED ON 3/8/2022 GRADE: C+