‘Is a coffin considered furniture?‘
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It’s difficult to define what ‘classic filmmaking’ is. It’s perhaps easier to intone that you know it when you see it. Well, The Last Stop in Yuma County is classic filmmaking. This is a movie that could have dropped any time from around 1967 onwards. There are no gimmicks. No bells and whistles. This is quite simply a really enjoyable story told well and filmed in a way that is competent and unobtrusive…
We begin with a travelling salesman (Jim Cummings) arriving at a gas station and being told by the proprietor (Faizon Love) that they are out of gas but a fuel truck is on the way. The salesman elects to wait it out in the diner next door where he meets diner owner and waitress Charlotte (Jocelin Donahue). Things quickly go south when a pair of bank robbers (Nicholas Logan and Richard Brake) show up and start causing trouble for everyone.
First-time director Francis Galluppi wisely resists the urge that debut filmmakers often have to insert themselves into their films through the use of camera trickery and unconventional editing techniques. Not every filmmaker can be Sam Raimi. Instead, he allows the story to speak for itself. By recruiting a talented cast of character actors, many of whom have appeared in iconic genre movies, Galluppi ensures that his cast do justice to the material. Sure, it’s indebted to Tarantino, particularly From Dusk Till Dawn and the diner scene from Pulp Fiction, as well as the films of Sidney Lumet, but there is nothing wrong with that. Particularly as this never feels like pastiche. This a director unafraid to wear his influences on his sleeve whilst still producing something that feels fresh and innovative (in one particularly satisfying moment the camera cuts away just as one of the characters is about to speak the title of the film). Cummings is a pleasure to watch as always, delivering one of his trademark breakdowns towards the end of the movie, and Brake is as chilling as ever, but this is really an ensemble piece with everyone pulling their weight. By the end of the movie, I believed in this gas station, and this diner, and these people. The fucked up situation we are introduced to here always feels grounded in reality. It’s the kind of tale that might have happened to someone’s cousin once in some distant, faraway town.
The Last Stop to Yuma County is a modern-day western that pays homage to the greats whilst still having something interesting to say – a real crowd-pleaser.