“The Last Stop in Yuma County” is a simple but effective genre piece to entertain you. While clearly influenced by the works of Quentin Tarantino and Coen brothers, the movie plays its genre game mostly fair and straight, and the overall result is fairly engaging even though you will quickly have a pretty good idea on what will eventually happen in the end.

At first, the movie succinctly establishes its small and simple main background, which is your average American roadside diner located somewhere in a remote region of Yuma County, Arizona in the 1970s. When a knife salesman played by Jim Cummings arrives at a gas station/motel right next to the diner on one day, he is only notified by the owner of the gas station that there is not any gasoline at present, and he has no choice but to wait at the diner for the upcoming arrival of the gasoline delivery truck.

The diner is opened not long after his arrival, and we get to know a bit about a waitress who happens to run the diner alone by herself on that day. She has been married to a local sheriff, and it looks like they are fairly happy in their marriage, though her husband still does not prepare much for the upcoming 17th anniversary for their marriage.

As the knife salesman continues to wait for the gasoline delivery truck at the diner, two more people arrive at the diner. They also need to fill the gasoline tank of their car just like the knife salesman, so they also come to wait at a spot not so far from where the knife salesman is sitting, and then we sense something fishy about these two guys.

Because the movie already gives us a little obvious hint at the beginning of the story, it does not take much time for us to see that these two guys are the criminals who robbed a local bank early in the morning. Although they certainly try not to look suspicious to the two other people in the diner, one of them is virtually a loose cannon while the other one is intensely thoughtful to say the least. Needless to say, we can clearly discern a trouble to be ensued sooner or later among them and the two other people in the diner.

The situation become more tense as both the knife salesman and the waitress eventually realize that they are with very dangerous criminals, and then the plot thickens with more story elements to be added to the narrative step by step. Besides the owner of the gas station/motel who still has no idea on what is really going on inside the diner, there is an old Texan couple who also happens to wait at the diner just like the other customers, and there is also a banal young couple eager to follow the footsteps of Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway in “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967) or Sissy Spacek and Martin Sheen in “Badlands” (1973).

Once all of its story elements are set and prepared, the screenplay by director/writer/editor/co-producer Francis Galluppi, who made a feature film debut here after making several short films and music videos, simply rolls them into one tricky situation after another. As some of the main characters try to outwit those two criminal figures, the movie provides several suspenseful moments including the one involved with three cups of hot coffee, and Galluppi and his crew members including cinematographer Mac Fisken did a commendable job of maintaining the level of tension beneath the screen.

Because we already know one crucial thing from the start, we naturally come to observe the main characters from the distance. Although many of these characters are more or less than broad archetypes, we still get some twisted fun from how their following desperate actions make the situation worse in one way or another along the story, and the movie deftly balances itself between black humor and some gravitas.

Needless to say, the movie depends a lot on the talent and presence of the main cast members, who sometimes did a little more than required by their respective parts for bringing a bit of extra personality to the film. Cummings, who has been one of the most dependable character actors since his little breakout film “Thunder Road” (2018), effortlessly embodies the neurotic qualities of his plain character, and we are not so surprised when one of the main characters says that his character looks like the hero of a certain famous Alfred Hitchcock film. On the opposite, Jocelin Donahue, who was once promising when she appeared in Ti West’s “The House of the Devil” (2009) but then unfortunately got herself crashed into “The Last Godfather” (2010), and Richard Brake, a seasoned character actor who has appeared in numerous films ranging from “Batman Begins” (2005) to “The Munsters” (2022), have each own moment to shine as the two other crucial main characters in the film, and you will be also delighted by several familiar performers including Barbara Crampton, Faizon Love, and Gene Jones, who was incidentally memorable as that unfortunate gas station owner in Coen brothers’ great film “No Country for Old Men” (2007).

In conclusion, “The Last Stop in Yuma County” may not bring anything particularly new to its genre territory, but it still works thanks to the skillful direction of Galluppi. He demonstrates here that he is another new promising American filmmaker to watch, and it will be interesting to see what may come next from him.