Movie Review ~ The Last Stop in Yuma County

On stage, it’s easy to use the power of live theater’s immediacy to get the audience to hold their breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Knowing you are sharing the same space with characters, even though you may understand the delineation between where the play ends and the seated viewers begin, increases the ability to get your heart racing and make your palms sweat.  Up on the big screen, however, it is increasingly daunting to craft a gripping, atmospheric thriller, especially one that’s confined to a single, unassuming location. 

Masters like Alfred Hitchcock could do it, and even contemporary examples like Green Room have demonstrated how to transform the simplest of set-ups into a tightly wound narrative focused on a confined space.  With his debut feature, The Last Stop in Yuma County, writer-director Francis Galluppi has constructed a suspenseful crime drama that’s riveting and remarkable in how it can go the distance on a small amount of fuel.  Beyond solidifying his place as a formidable talent to watch in the years to come, The Last Stop in Yuma County has already earned Galluppi the opportunity to helm an upcoming Evil Dead installment before his film even hits wide release.

As most of these neo-noir pics go, the set-up is simple.  A traveling knife salesman (Jim Cummings, The Beta Test, a hidden gem of an actor) finds himself stranded at a remote Arizona rest stop, only to become embroiled in a high-stakes hostage situation when a pair of bank robbers seek refuge from the law.  Desperate and dangerous, the criminals keep the salesman and anyone who stops into the roadside café on lockdown until a gas truck can arrive and fill the empty fuel reservoir so they can be on their way.

While they wait, the mundane waypoint becomes a claustrophobic battleground sweat-soaked in suspense and deception as tables are turned as soon as they are set.  What begins as a psychologically probing crime drama gives way to a viscerally thrilling final act that doesn’t quite live up to what came before, but it’s no less unique in its approach to its presentation of flawed characters making human choices.  The meticulously crafted dialogue is all lean, Grade A material, trimmed of any excess fat that would weigh it down.

Anchoring the film’s eventual descent into mayhem is a uniformly stellar ensemble cast, with each seasoned performer bringing authenticity to their respective roles that elevate the material beyond mere genre exercise.  I’ve liked Jocelin Donahue (Offseason) in many films, but she brings an extra dollop of pluck and palpable urgency as the diner’s waitress caught in the middle of the vicious thieves and a growing number of customers entering unaware of the danger on the menu. Barbarian‘s Richard Brake’s voice slices through the tension like a sharp blade, its marble-gargling timbre dripping with menace.

Further complementing the leads are actors Faizon Love as the kindly gas station attendant, Michael Abbott Jr. (The Dark and the Wicked) as the town’s sheriff, and scream queen legend Barbara Crampton (You’re Next) in a tiny role as a police receptionist.  Filling out the rest of the cast are notables such as Gene Jones (The Old Man & the Gun) and Robin Bartlett (The Fabelmans) as a docile long-married couple standing in stark contrast to the rising unrest found in the volitile pairing of Ryan Masson and Sierra McCormick (The Vast of Night).  I also enjoyed Connor Paolo and Nicholas Logan (I Care a Lot) in sidekick roles, both aptly doing their darndest to support their #1’s. 

For all its strengths, including a handsome production design from Charlie Textor (Scrambled), who nails the kitschy period design one might expect to find in a dusty roadside diner, the film does occasionally stumble.  When it ventures beyond the confines of the restaurant, it loses some of its momentum as it explores peripheral storylines and characters that are not as fully established as the ones we’ve spent most of our time with.  It’s understandable why we must travel in the film’s first half, but a late detour in the short run sacrifices a bit of the sustained intensity of Galluppi’s central hostage scenario.  A prolonged finale that feels like it came from a wholly different idea provides more rough waters, and you wonder what Galluppi could have accomplished had he truly confined the film to one location throughout.

Nonetheless, such minor quibbles do little to weaken the overall impact of Galluppi’s uncompromising debut feature.  There’s an evident mastery of atmosphere and storytelling at play, and in the realm of independent genre cinema, The Last Stop in Yuma County serves as an announcement of the arrival of a major new talent to be on the lookout for.  It pushes the boundaries of what can be done with a single-location thriller and raises the bar on how to make ordinarily standard characters substantive players in a twisted game.