Movie Review: Last Stop in Yuma County

Last Stop in Yuma County finds several strangers stranded at a diner in the middle of Arizona waiting for a gas truck to come to the neighboring gas station. The strangers include a knife salesman (Jim Cummings), a pair of thieves who just robbed a bank (Richard Brake and Nicholas Logan), the diner’s lone waitress (Jocelin Donahue), a couple looking for trouble (Ryan Masson and Sierra McCormick), and an older couple (Gene Jones and Robin Bartlee) just passing through. The air conditioning doesn’t work, everyone is on edge, and they’re all waiting to fill up and get out of there.

The events that transpire throughout Last Stop in Yuma County are unpredictable and full of tension, violence, and dark humor. Writer/director Francis Galluppi, making one of the great feature directorial debuts of 2024, has crafted a tight, wicked little thriller reminiscent of early Coen brothers films.

Galluppi’s screenplay is sensational. The setup is simple but executed to perfection. Galluppi makes it feel like we are one of the people waiting in the diner for gas. We’ve never met these characters before and only get a glimpse into who they are and why they are at this diner. The knife salesman is traveling back from a business trip to celebrate his daughter’s birthday. The waitress is bored with her life in this town and is married to the dimwitted police chief. The two criminals, one a shoot-first idiot, the other a psychotic planner, have a bag full of money in the trunk of their cars and are trying to hit the road as fast as possible before the cops catch on to them. You can feel the decades the older couple has been together while also knowing the young couple thinks they’re a new Bonnie and Clyde. Even the diner has a little personality, as its slogan reads, “You’ll die for our rhubarb pie” and believe me, plenty of people do. It’s smart writing from Galluppi that pays off perfectly in the film’s third act.

Galluppi brilliantly builds the tension by layering in action and story beats with character introductions. He will introduce us to a character or two, let the scene develop around them, and then towards the middle or end of the scene he drops a plot revelation or a scene violence that makes the diner situation more tense and interesting and when the moment is about to hit its breaking point, another character will come in and the tension will diffuse for a little bit until the next revelation. He does this several times throughout the film and it’s smart writing that kept me captivated and interested in every person in the diner and every piece of action that took place.

Last Stop in Yuma County is ultimately a film about normal people in extreme circumstances and how greed and violence can affect all of us. All of these people thought they were hanging out in a diner waiting for gas until erratic behavior and violence broke out. It’s a captivating, heart-racing thriller with tons of humor and shocking violence and led by a stellar ensemble cast. I had a great time watching this movie and think it is one of the best movies of 2024 so far.

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