Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Gasoline Alley on Hulu, A Would-Be Noir From The Bruce Willis VOD Stockpile

Gasoline Alley (Hulu) is the latest in a line of Bruce Willis-adjacent VOD titles with writing, directing, or production from Edward Drake and distro from Saban Films, movies like Cosmic Sin, Breach, and American Siege, all of which have appeared amid the revelations about Willis’ cognitive decline and his abrupt retirement. This time around, Willis appears briefly to mutter a line or five as a police detective with links to a string of murders pinned on a grumbly ex-con tattooist played by Devon Sawa.  

GASOLINE ALLEY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Jimmy Jayne (Devon Sawa) keeps it simple. With a prison beef for assault in his rearview, he operates his tattoo parlor Gasoline Alley with a measure of pride, maintains his 1966 Chevelle, and sips bourbon in the Melrose bar where his late mom used to ply her trade. That’s where he meets party girl Star (Irina Antonenko) in passing, so he’s dismayed when two pushy LAPD detectives, Freeman (Bruce Willis) and Vargas (Luke Wilson), tell him that Star’s dead and he’s the prime suspect. Jimmy isn’t going to take this heat lying down, so he fires up a cigarette and works the street for leads into Star’s death. Bourke (Kenny Wormald), a pompous TV actor who Jimmy protected in prison, tells him she ran with a porn producer and low-level criminal named Persi (Rick Salomon). So it can’t be a coincidence when somebody in a Land Rover owned by Persi takes a pot shot at Jimmy’s Chevelle and chases him around town.

Vargas, talky and sarcastic, and Freeman, nearly mute, are still leaning on Jimmy for the murder of Star and a string of similiar killings. So what does it mean when he infiltrates a druggy late night soiree at Persi’s, and he sees Freeman there? Again with the awkward coincidences. And when a bouncer from the same party (Vernon Davis, recently of the NFL) winds up dead in the trunk of Jimmy’s ride, it seems pretty clear that he’s getting too close to whoever wants him to take the fall.

Increasingly on edge, and now on his vintage Indian Scout since the Chevelle was impounded, Jimmy befriends Eleanor (Sufe Bradshaw), a singer who knew Star from Persi’s parties. But Eleanor also knows who Persi gets his drugs from. “He likes to strut around with a scary crowd. But as much as he likes to be in all this gangsta shit, they just take his money and laugh at his dumb white ass.” Illicit drugs, dead party girls, wanna be gangsters, and suspicious links back to Freeman and the police: Jimmy Jayne figures he knows who’s been making his simple life so difficult.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? A couple modern noirs with bones similar to Gasoline but quite a bit more going for them are Too Late, a self-referential mood piece from 2015 with standout performances from John Hawkes and Jeff Fahey, and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), Shane Black’s pulpy, cheeky directorial debut with a rock solid cast including Michelle Monaghan, Val Kilmer, and Robert Downey Jr.

Performance Worth Watching: Devon Sawa does keep Jimmy Jayne’s guarded tough guy nature interesting. But Kat Foster (Barry) and Sufe Bradshaw (Veep) each manage to bring some real gravity to a pair of next-to-nothing roles, with Foster as Christine, Jimmy’s on again/off again squeeze, and Bradshaw as Eleanor, a local singer caught up in the mayhem.

Memorable Dialogue: When heavily bearded mechanic Roy (Billy Jack Harlow) encounters Jimmy, he knows he’s “a kindred soul of the heathen brethren,” and Jimmy knows Roy is exactly the kind of guy to get you a no-questions-asked piece, preferably with filed-down serial numbers. “I got someone trying to pin four murders on me,” Jimmy tells his new buddy. “I’m not going back inside. Not for something I didn’t do.”

Sex and Skin: Some background salaciousness, but nothing serious.

Our Take: It’s never made clear why the “American Siege” title resurfaces in Gasoline Alley as the name of a popular show on TV. In the context of the film, Jimmy Jayne was once a prison yard protector for the hit show’s star, a frat boy type played by Kenny Wormald, and visits the set to bleed his unlikely jailbird bud for info about Hollywood’s after hours party scene. But American Siege is also a quickie 2022 VOD title “starring” Bruce Willis that director Edward Drake shot in Georgia, where Gasoline Alley had its principal filming. Wormald’s character adds little to the plot — the tactful Jimmy later gathers similar intel from a friend on the police force — so it’s worth asking if the “American Siege” reference is either a filmmaker in-joke or the logical result of concurrent movies shot with economy in mind. The California setting of Gasoline Alley is half-hearted, anyway, barring some late-night establishing shot exteriors. Consider the fact that Bruce Willis, as a dirty cop who’s supposed to be fleeing his LAPD precinct, takes a phone call right in front of the sign for Tifton, Georgia’s police department.

It’s curious lapses like these that end up populating way too much of Gasoline Alley, to the point that it drags considerably from scene to scene. There’s a mood to its aimlessness – Devon Sawa gives Jimmy some real backbone as a more-or-less standup dude who treats people with the kind of respect Vargas and Freeman expect but never earn. His devotion to smoking cigarettes is also commendable, whether he’s taking evasive action in his Chevelle or being shot at in a tunnel by said dirty cops. But Sawa’s commitment to the role notwithstanding, Gasoline Alley can’t line up its awkwardly-sized pieces to form the convincing noir it aims to be.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Gasoline Alley has a bit of noirish flair, particularly in a hard-edged performance from Devon Sawa. But it can’t overcome its aimless pace and uneven narrative.