BEFORE: It's a holiday weekend, so I hope you're somewhere having fun and the weather is nice, I haven't gone to a beach in quite some time, it's not really my thing, but if you're at a beach I hope you're wearing sunscreen and/or having a good time. This is usually a big barbecue weekend, too, but I'm staying at home. We have friends coming over for a mid-evening meal, mostly we'll be enjoying a couple mostly vegetarian charcuterie boards, and I'm a bit distressed to learn that's a thing, I'm having a bit of deja vu because when I was married the first time a lot of our friends were vegetarian or vegan, like East Village artsy people that we played D&D with. I guess the more things change, the more they remain the same, only our friends today are a high-school friend of my wife's and her husband, they're sort of on-and-off vegetarians, or I guess that means they cheat a lot or are maybe just bad at it. I guess it's back in vogue, like it was in the early 90's. Whatever, as long as we get a party tray that means more salami slices for me. We'll play some board games and drink some margaritas, so if I'm late posting this one, that could mean I passed out after the margaritas.
Labor Day/Bruce Willis Weekend continues as Bruce carries over from "Tears of the Sun".
THE PLOT: A man implicated in a triple homicide begins his own investigation, enlisting the two detectives on his tail in order to expose a conspiracy.
AFTER: This is a bit of a weird one, it's a noir-like thriller, a murder mystery and a "man falsely accused" crime drama all in one. But it's set in present-day Los Angeles, I think, so that means "neo-noir"? Whatever. Bruce Willis is in it for about 10 minutes total, so I think it's one of those movies that they made in the last few months before he retired from acting, they booked him solid for maybe six months straight so they could release Bruce Willis movies for several years after his dementia kicked in and he forgot everything - I guess that's kind of oddly sad and enterprising at the same time.
He's got maybe 10 lines of dialogue in this film, he probably spent about two days on the set and then they shot the rest of the movie without him, which kind of means they had to shoot the beginning and the ending first and then deal with all the stuff in-between, I hope that doesn't give away too much about the film, try not to think about it I guess. Bruce plays a detective in charge of the investigation of a triple homicide, three call girls-slash-aspiring actresses found dead in a hotel room. That's clearly somebody trying to send a message, but what message? And to whom? Jesus, I watched the movie and I'm not really sure what that message was - dumb it down, maybe?
The main suspect is a tattoo artist named Jimmy Jayne - a cigarette lighter promoting his tattoo shop, named "Gasoline Alley" was found at the scene, so unless the detectives can learn more about what happened there, he's going to remain a person of interest. (Ironic, because he doesn't really seem that interesting...). But Jayne is an ex-con, who did time for accidental manslaughter, and honestly there's probably a big difference between being in a street fight with someone who ends up dead, and slaughtering three women in a hotel room, but the detectives might just be thinking that he's violent and escalating, it's tough to say.
Jimmy Jayne has to pull a "Jason Statham" and work his way up through a criminal organization to try to clear his name, honestly he might be inclined to let the police do their job, but someone in a black SUV tries to kill him, and there's his motivation to find the real killer, in addition to not being made to serve time (again) for something that he didn't do. The back-story of the murder turns out to have something to do with the porn industry, and a little bit of human trafficking through an underground tunnel between San Diego and Tijuana. I've spent enough time in the San Diego area to know that Mexico's not very far away, and one time after a Saturday night at Comic-Con I rode a trolley down to Chula Vista and almost got stuck down there. So yeah, this could happen maybe.
However there's barely enough excitement in this film to be interesting. I fell asleep after the movie with the TV on (as usual) and when I woke up, "Baby Driver" was playing on some channel, and I watched the last half hour, which was just action-packed by comparison. So I have to ask, how come 10 minutes of "Baby Driver" is more interesting than this WHOLE 97-minute movie? And if we (collectively) know how to make exciting movies, why doesn't everybody just do that?
I have to call a NITPICK POINT on the anecdote that Star, a hooker, tells Jimmy in the bar at the scene of the film. She says she charges her johns $510 for an hour or $1,000 for the night, and the reason is that an ATM only gives out 20-dollar bills, and nobody has ever asked her to "break a note". Somehow this pricing structure implies that she's making it easier for men to pay her $1,000 rather than $500, but this makes no sense. Assuming that one can withdraw $1,000 from an ATM, why would a client withdraw $1,000 when he could just as easily withdraw $520 and overpay her by just $10? Does this mean that her clients tend to overtip her by paying her double her hourly rate? Or are they willing to pay her for the night and then get rid of her after an hour, because she's so annoying? Are her clients just unwilling to ask for change, is that considered bad manners when dealing with a prostitute? Seriously, I can't understand this pricing structure of hers and it's going to drive me crazy - also, she pronounces "ATM" very weirdly, like I know she's foreign, but couldn't they have done another take to get her to try and pronounce that correctly?
"Gasoline Alley" is definitely the kind of movie you watch after you've watched over 5,400 other movies, and it's probably also the kind of movie that you only watch once. There's really no good reason to circle back to this one, like ever.
But Devon Sawa WILL return in the "Final Destination" movies, which I'm planning to watch in October. Every Movie Year I try to handle at least one major horror franchise, like the "Twilight" or "Scream" movies in years past. If the plan holds this year, I'll be able to cross off all the "Final Destination" films and also the three original "Candyman" films, and then I'll have to save all the other franchises ("Saw", "Evil Dead", "Child's Play" and "Halloween" for future Octobers.)
Directed by Edward Drake (director of "Cosmic Sin")
Also starring Luke Wilson (last seen in "Adam Sandler: Funny Guy"), Devon Sawa (last seen in "Escape Plan: The Extractors"), Kat Foster, Sufe Bradshaw (last seen in "Together Together"), Vernon Davis (last seen in "Baywatch"), Billy Jack Harlow (last seen in "Summer Camp"), Kenny Wormald (last seen in "Love & Mercy"), Johnny Dowers, Mike Dargatis (last seen in "Southpaw"), Rick Salomon (last seen in "Pamela: A Love Story"), Ash Adams, Kayla McGhee, Steve Eastin (last seen in "Killers of the Flower Moon"), Adam Huel Potter (last seen in "Hard Kill"), Angie Pack, The D.O.C. / Tracy Curry, Irina Antonenko (last seen in "The Darkest Hour"), Carrington Brooke Durham, Hope Golds, Benjie Barbee, Chris Cleveland (last seen in "The Prestige"), Phillip Joe Luke, Jess Zuker
RATING: 4 out of 10 bundles of very flammable $20 bills
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