The most WTF neo-western ever

Just like the Coen brothers decided to adapt Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men, rookie director Francis Galluppi implemented topics such as greed and human beings' weird nature in his debut film, which was so brilliantly calculated as surprisingly unexpected, and turned into an absolute achievement instead of just a cheap copy. He represents the accomplishment of the dream of any aspiring director wishing to sit in the chair but frustrated by not finding the ideal story. This Los Angeles native with his kind of hipster vibe knew how to take the maximum advantage of all the resources of a remote corner in the middle of the Californian desert to bring to life a neo-western in which nothing is as it seems. You may want to watch the movie before you keep reading since I'm warning you: this article has HUGE spoilers.

I don't exactly recall the moment I discovered cinema. It may have been with the VHS copy of Blade Runner that my father made me watch, the Forrest Gump's Sundays or the excitement I felt about watching a dinosaur on the big screen for the first time, when my mother had to close my mouth because I didn't understand anything I was seeing, just like Sam Neill did during the first encounter with that giant brachiosaurus. Sometimes, memory works in weird ways because what I can recall the most clearly are those titles that altered my brain temporally throughout my life. And this film is definitely one of them.

What could go wrong in a diner in the middle of nowhere? If great westerns have taught us something, that is that the less people are in a place, the worse things can get. In The Last Stop in Yuma County, there aren't any final confrontations, wasted people drinking in a tavern nor any perverse man trying to inappropriately touch a waitress. The situation is quite simple, but as characters make certain decisions, an unstoppable snowball starts forming. Destiny or bad luck? A knife salesman approaches with his car a modest gas station in which there's a "Last Stop" sign, like an omen he will not get out alive. A bird standing on the vending machines flies away. Galluppi subtly displayed the pieces, but it's too early to come to conclusions.

The gas station's kind owner tells him he's waiting for the fuel truck to arrive but he's welcome to wait at the diner. Charlotte, the waitress and owner of the place, arrives in a car driven by the county sheriff, who is also coincidentally her husband. The salesman sees how the woman opens the doors of her workplace, which is famous for its rhubarb pie, and when he turns, he sees the sheriff's attentive look, but also finds a certain warmness in his attitude. It seems no one is prepared for the worst, but if you think about it for a second, you should be. What better place for danger or chaos than a diner in the middle of nowhere? Before leaving the car, the salesman hears on the radio: “the police reporting that two men got away with an estimated $700,000 thousand dollars from the Buckeye Western Fidelity Bank of Arizona. A witness spotted a green Pinto with a damaged rear fleeing the bank at approximately 6:20 a.m. this morning.”

What's the best idea the director could have come up with? Yes, for the Pinto to appear on the road and run out of gas. What's a better stop than the last stop in Yuma County? Little by little, several people enter the diner to wait for the fuel truck and others only hang out at the place to spend some time with the lovely Charlotte. We witness a cute lady who knits and her husband who seems to suspect absolutely everything, two young men longing to be the next Bonnie and Clyde, an Indian trucker and, of course, before all of them appear, both thief brothers. The older one is quite eloquent and the younger one doesn't seem to be prepared to face the consequences of robbing a bank.

The tension handling is impeccable. Galluppi even affords to add humor within the suspense with some hilarious and ridiculous dialogue lines. The young couple and the knife salesman are the ones who recognize the green Pinto, but the rest start to suspect. I experienced my first WTF moment in this story minutes before hitting the first hour of the film: when the brothers can't keep lying anymore, so the older one approaches the Indian trucker to get information. Bingo! The trucker has a full tank and the exit route is marked, but there are several witnesses so as to start a private negotiation.

In an unforgettable scene, the camera anticipates in slow-motion each one of the expected moves these people can make in the diner with Roy Orbison's "Crying" playing in the background. Orchestrated in great detail, the song ends at the exact moment the most western aspect of the film appears: the famous gunfight. I thought: "This isn't going to turn out right." But I would have never imagined how the movie transformed from there on. As I mentioned at the beginning of the article: THERE ARE MASSIVE SPOILERS HERE. One can imagine the outcome of certain cinematic situations: we can feel the nervousness present in a situation like this one. Two thieves are trapped with several people, and some of them even suspect the crime they committed a couple hours ago.

When blood starts shedding from these people's bodies in a heartbeat may appear as the most shocking part of the movie. This scene represents one of the best climaxes of the genre. But Galluppi still had some aces up his sleeves. The only survivor faces a both tragic and extraordinary situation: everyone is dead but him and the 700 thousand dollars are still there. What would you do in his shoes? I believe no one would think twice about it. If I had run out of gas, everyone inside the diner would have died and I had the chance to take the money without anyone seeing me, I would do it with my eyes closed. But our protagonist isn't a calculating person, he lets the frenzy drive him as any of us would do.

What else does the director want to tell us? As absurdity knocks on the door to invite us to take part in this innovative neo-western, the unexpected also lurks behind. When he thought his life was solved, a couple with their new-born baby shows up at the place. Yes, to fill up their tank, what else would it be for? Some out-of-control decisions allow the protagonist to flee with the money, but everything goes back to the origin point: his car runs out of gas in the exact place where a truck collided and derailed. Details have been thought to the maximum. This truck is the one that appears in the initial credits and that never got to the gas station. Destiny or bad luck? I bring up this question again while I try to convince myself that our lives, as mundane as they seem, are nothing without those small dramatic sparks we usually describe as “WTF.”

Posted on DECEMBER 13, 2024, 15:39 PM | UTC-GMT -3

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