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GASOLINE ALLEY (2022)
Director: Edward Drake Cast: Devon Sawa, Luke Wilson, Bruce Willis, Kat Foster, Sufe Bradshaw, Johnny Dowers, Kenny Wormald, Rick Salomon, Steve Eastin, Tracey "The Doc" Curry, Irina Antonenko MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:37 Release Date: 2/25/22 (limited; digital & on-demand) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 24, 2022 A detective mystery doesn't need to be airtight in its progression and logic. That's at least one unintentional semi-positive about Gasoline Alley. Co-writer/director Edward Drake's mystery doesn't make much sense, but who cares? It doesn't matter, not only because a mystery can do a lot more than simply make sense, but also because this movie possesses so many other problems. We meet Jimmy Jayne (Devon Sawa), the owner of the eponymous tattoo parlor. He's at a bar late one night, when he's approached by sex worker Star (Irina Antonenko). The next morning, a pair of police detectives, Vargas (Luke Wilson) and Freeman (Bruce Willis), are called in to investigate the murders of several women, including Star. Jimmy is their top suspect, and he really should be, considering the fact he knows about the killings before the cops make the crime public. That's not a spoiler about the identity of the murderer—just one of multiple screenwriting shortcuts made by Drake and Tom Sierchio that show how little they actually care about assembling their mystery. We learn the tattoo artist is the son of a sex worker, who went missing, and a cop father, who had a nervous breakdown trying to find her. Those background details, combined with the fact that Star told him a slightly amusing penis joke (which, in addition to being the full extent of character development for her, oddly ends up being a giveaway clue at one point), are enough, apparently, to make him the perfect amateur detective to solve the multiple murders. His investigation into the woman's murder takes him at a slug's pace to the set of a TV show, a sex party run by a wealthy creep and populated by actual plot spoilers, an independent recording studio (where Sufe Bradshaw, as a struggling singer, provides the single scene of charm and humanity within the whole movie), and the offices of a porno-movie empire. Everyone at these locations mostly talks around the killings, the clues, the suspects, and the grand conspiracy connecting all of these shady folks and others. Occasionally, someone chases, fights with, or shoots at Jimmy, in sequences of obvious deflection from how barely considered the plotting is. The whole affair is about as convincing as its Los Angeles backdrop, which is saying something, given the fact that there's a scene in which Georgia, the actual shooting location, is featured prominently on a sign in the background. Gasoline Alley is a lifeless, rambling detective yarn that stumbles from the start and keeps finding new ways to fall all over itself. Copyright © 2022 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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(for violent content, drug use, language throughout and some sexual
content)
