Gasoline Alley is, if we’re being honest, not great. It has script issues, up and down acting in a number of roles, and a handful of other problems. But at its center there’s Devon Sawa as a grizzled ex-con tattoo artist accused of a crime he didn’t commit chain smoking, driving muscle cars, and tough-guy-quipping his way through the seedy underbelly back rooms of Hollywood. If nothing else, that makes it compelling enough to be watchable.
Sawa plays Jimmy Jayne. Jimmy is the last person seen with a prostitute named Star (Irina Antonenko) the night before she and two other working girls are murdered. And wouldn’t you know it, the cops think he did the deed. With detectives Freeman (Bruce Willis) and Vargas (Luke Wilson) breathing down his neck, and all manner of shady underworld characters up in his business, Jimmy sets out to solve the case himself and clear his name.
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Still, for any pitfalls and narrative gaps, Sawa keeps the audience reasonably on the hook. Maybe it’s the Idle Hands stan in me talking, but he does a solid job as the grim, stoic hard-case, drifting through life, more interested in being left alone than engaging with the world. I know he never really went away or stopped working, but between movies like this and Hunter Hunter, I dig a lot of what he’s doing lately. (Also, he’s freaking yoked here and now I want to see him play like a mercenary type or a gnarly biker—get this man another action vehicle, stat.)
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I’m not entirely sure what Luke Wilson is doing. Then again, I’m not sure the movie knows what it’s doing with Luke Wilson. Vargas plays inconsistent to say the least—initially he goes hard at Jimmy, trying to back him into a corner, convinced of his guilt; but by turns he’s also Jimmy’s ally and co-conspirator, but also a skeptic, or maybe his pal. Who knows? The character is all over the place. Wilson, for his part, at least has a good time chewing on cop slang and meaty, cynical detective-story cliches.
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