As a general rule of thumb, if some movie is described as “Coen-esque,” I must watch it. The Last Stop in Yuma County is a blend of Coen darkly comic malevolence, as well as Tarantino’s knack for the menace of dramatic irony and boiling tension waiting to explode, and it’s a firecracker of a debut for writer/director Francis Gallupi. It’s a relatively contained tale, sticking mostly to one rustic roadside diner and gas station along the dusty Arizona byways. On this day, two of its patrons happen to be recent bank robbers on the run, and they’re holding the other diner patrons captive until the gas pumps get fixed to fuel up and escape. The first hour then becomes a dread-filled game of waiting for things to go very badly. Our two main characters, a traveling knife salesman (Jim Cummings) and a waitress (Joceline Donahue) who happens to be the wife of the town sheriff, are working together to try and elicit help without endangering their lives, all the time more people keep entering the diner and inadvertently joining the simmering hostage situation. The way Gallupi writes his different characters is sharp and efficient, and the dread compounds in such organic complications, showing how fiendishly well-developed he’s made his potboiler. It also has a clear eye for style. Around the Act Two break, the movie becomes something else, which it intimated through a very specific film reference in conjunction with a specific character reference. It still proves compelling, but the overall sense of darkness and tragedy wore me down a little by the end. By the conclusion of its 90 minutes, I was hearing the saintly voice of Marge Gunderson in my head, shaking her head at the preventable body count and bad choices (“And all for a little bit of money. There’s more to life than money, don’cha know?”). The Last Stop in Yuma County is a twisty and twisted little macabre morality play in the guise of familiar Coen-esque capers. Welcome to the big leagues, Gallupi.

Nate’s Grade: B+