R | 1h 30m | Neo-western, Crime, Thriller | May 10, 2024
“The Last Stop in Yuma County’s” got a setup you’ve seen many times before: a rural Arizona gas station out on the edge of town; desert tumbleweeds; a greasy-spoon diner; oppressive heat; a broken air conditioner; a cute waitress; a highway patrol roving around; a couple of bank robbers attempting a getaway.
While it’s not as shot-of-tequila wincingly flavorful as Tarantino, or as quirky as the Coen Brothers, former music video director Francis Galluppi, making his feature film directorial debut, borrows liberally from both those sources (who wouldn’t?). He impressively plunks down a highly satisfying, B-film-neo-noir-western-crime-thriller-indie, with comedic undertones.
It features a deliberate, very-hard-to-sustain slow burn (it’s a neat trick to move at a snail’s pace and yet maintain a high degree of tension throughout) that explosively proves worth the wait. It also features a great cast and a smart script—thus far, it’s one of the year’s best dark-horse surprises.
What Goes On
The time is 1970s-ish, since there’s a light green rotary phone in the aforementioned diner and a dark green Pinto out front. A cutlery salesman (Jim Cummings, looking enough like Anthony Perkins in “Psycho” that one character mentions it to her boyfriend, who replies: “Oh, yeah, he kinda does”) is en route to celebrate his daughter’s birthday, except he’s extremely low on gas.
It’s 100 miles through Yuma County to the next gas station, so he stops. Bad news: the fuel field-truck is behind schedule, so the station is dry as a bone.
Vernon (Faizon Love), the owner, suggests the knife salesman go have a coffee at the adjacent diner and wait for the truck—it should be along any minute now.
Charlotte, the kindly waitress and owner (Jocelin Donahue), is perfunctorily but genuinely friendly and offers the salesman a slice of the diner’s specialty, rhubarb pie, to take to his daughter.
Bank Robbers
Two sociopaths, Beau (Richard Brake) and Travis (Nicholas Logan) show up like a couple bank-heist flies in the ointment and foul the mood. Both Caroline and the knife salesman heard about the $700,000 theft earlier on the radio, and therefore know that the green Pinto is their getaway car.
While Travis is clearly not the sharpest tool in the shed (he at one point declares that Vern is “not the smartest tool in the shed), Beau’s a wary and discerning predator and warns Caroline to act like it’s just a regular day at the office. Since all they need is gas, once the tanker arrives—they’ll be on their way. And just like that, it’s fixing to be the diner scene from “Pulp Fiction.”
Sure enough, more disappointed gas-hopefuls head next door from the dry pump. Caroline’s husband, the town sheriff (Michael Abbott Jr.), at one point dispatches the police station rookie, Gavin (Connor Paolo), to the diner to pick some coffee for the precinct. Caroline, knowing her hubby hates sugar, surreptitiously shakes half a cup of sugar into his coffee as an S.O.S.
Also arriving at the diner are a grumpy, elderly, married couple Robert and Earline, used to each other’s quirks (Gene Jones and Robin Bartlett), and a young Bonnie-and-Clyde outlaw-wannabe couple: Miles (Ryan Masson) and his constantly and loudly shaming and complaining “gun-moll” Sybil (Sierra McCormick).
Rounding out the diner cast is Pete, a friendly local rancher who’s a member of Caroline-the-waitress’s gravy and biscuits fan club (Jon Proudstar).
David (Sam Huntington) and his pregnant wife Sarah (Alex Essoe) show up last minute along with their baby, just as a five-way Mexican stand-off among the diner patrons fires up.
Overall
The run-time might be a tad excessive, but director Galluppi establishes tension, uneasiness, and, well, fun, right off the bat, that expertly builds to the big payoff.The knife salesman is the best approximation of a main character, but “Yuma County” is really an ensemble piece with no weak links; the cast create well fleshed-out characters in brief spotlight segments, and within the framework of this unusual scenario, their responses are not predictable.
“Yuma County” makes it all play out in the most entertaining train-wreck manner possible, and while you might not want to witness all of the madness unfolding, it’s hard to look away.
Lastly, what it really feels like is that the karmic laws have been sped up; every time a character wavers on the razor’s edge of good versus bad and virtue versus vice—and chooses the dark side—they get absolutely hammered with karmic retribution in extremely short shrift.
This makes the whole tale reminiscent of (and similarly comedic to) that other denizen of the Arizona desert, who, the minute he tries to get away with something sneaky, immediately gets schwacked with various forms of tremendous violence. He gets run over, zapped, blown up, smacked down, pancaked, shredded, burnt to a smoking crisp, or run off very high cliffs (whistling noise ... silence .... *poof!*)—Wile E. Coyote.
