3 out of 5

Directed by: Edward John Drake

As far as these types of films go – the DTVs with an A-lister given top billing and minimal screentime – Gasoline Alley actually isn’t bad. It forgets to really give itself a reason to exist, which certainly shoots its tension in the foot, but I’d guess the creators rightfully assumed we’d fill in the story gaps, taking the tropey setup to kind of assume why tattoo artist Jimmy Jayne (Devon Sawa) is so hell-bent on avenging the death of a woman he meets in a bar and talks to for 30 seconds. But my other guess is that the assumption went the other way – like, the story is so generic, everyone making the movie thought they had added in character motivations and backstory when they hadn’t.

Either way, the thing boils down to your standard manly man avenge / save woman thing, with our A-lister Bruce Willis in a surprising amount of the movie, but very disconnected from it. We also have some sub A-listers, though, with Luke Wilson playing copper Freddy Vargas, and the aforementioned Sawa in the lead. Sawa really puts quite a bit into the movie, even if the dialogue asks much less of him, and Wilson avoids the option of hamming up the cop role beyond what’s required, delivering an engaging performance as well. Willis can be uncomfortable to watch: while this was shot in 2021, before his 2022 retirement due to aphasia, what we can imagine as the effects are very present – his eye focus wanders, and there’s sometimes the feeling that he’s not saying lines exactly as scripted, as the followups will be a little mismatched. Still, if we accept that these last bundle of roles were what he wanted to do, director Edward John Drake got a good amount of screentime from him (and with the rest of the cast, and on set!), and the movie is effectively cut around Bruce’s scenes to “work.” It feels like as gentle of a way to manage this as possible.

While I wouldn’t call the rest of the movie gentle, that sentiment does carry over. The script, from Drake and Tom Sierchio, is the weakest link, as it’s barely strung together to get characters from point A to B: Jayne meets girl; girl shows up dead; Jayne is a suspect; and while being watched by the cops, Jayne works to find and take vengeance on the girl’s murderers. Most “dialogue” scenes are padding, not delivering useful info, and giving extra screentime to character’s walking and so on, and much of the Why interworking are akin to the motivations mentioned above: they’re skimmed from stories of this nature, sprinkled atop, and yadda yadda.

However, smoothing over this lack of compellingness, there’s firstly Sawa, very entrancing on screen, and DP Brandon Lee Cox’s damn fine framing and lighting, which bounces all over with colors, but gives every scene a nice rawness that counters the overly digital look most of these DTVs have. Additionally, Scott Currie’s score also bounces around a lot, this time in tone, but every main entry they provide adds to the scenes, effectively, and does so with enough swagger to come across as original.

So the movie is made competently, with effective leads, and a graceful handling of its aging top-biller. Set aside some larger pool of movies for comparison, Gasoline Alley isn’t much to write about, but in context of these specific types of films, there was a good amount of effort behind the scenes that translates into something watchable.