The plot of Murder at Yellowstone City in brief
Gold. It can make a man kill, as you already know if you’ve seen the Zach Efron movie Gold, which has the apt title of “Gold.” In the book Murder at Yellowstone City, several people are killed after Robert Dunnigan, a gold prospector, tells the town about the gold he has found.
Dunnigan is the first person to be killed. Cicero, a former slave who just rode into town, is the number one suspect. The Sheriff puts him in jail for the crime, but it’s soon clear that he has the wrong person.
Who then killed Dunnigan and the other people who died in Yellowstone City? And does the Sheriff figure out who the killer is? Let’s pay more attention to the movie.
How does the film start?
When Robert Dunnigan’s explosive shows where a gold mine is, the movie starts with a bang. He is thrown into the air. Cicero, who is on his way to Yellowstone City, sees this happen.
After telling his wife Emma that he found gold, Robert goes to the nearby town of Yellowstone City to tell the people there about his find and promises them a lot of money.
Not long after that, Cicero comes to town, but some of the locals are wary of this newcomer.
After leaving his horse with Violet, the local stable hand, Cicero goes to the saloon for a drink. He and Edgar, the owner of the saloon, start to get along because they both love Shakespeare.
Life is calm for a while, but when Robert is killed on his way home from the local whorehouse, the Sheriff arrests his top suspect.
Who does the Sheriff put behind bars?
When Robert’s body is found, the Sheriff asks Thaddeus Murphy, the pastor, to make a coffin and set up a funeral. Then, the Sheriff goes to Cicero’s rooming house and arrests him for killing the gold prospector. After that, he tells Cicero that he will be hanged if he doesn’t say what he did in front of the whole town.
Violet comes to tell the Sheriff that his prisoner, Cicero, couldn’t have done the crime that happened outside of town because his horse never left the stables.
Violet isn’t important to the Sheriff, so Cicero stays in his cell. Later, Alice, the pastor’s wife, goes to see the poor stranger, and he tells her about his life. We find out that he doesn’t have any family and that the character in Shakespeare’s play “Julius Caesar” gave him the idea for his name.
Alice can’t give Cicero all of Shakespeare’s works, but she does have a Bible, which she leaves with him before going back to her husband.
People think that Cicero killed the gold hunter
Isabel, who was in love with Robert and worked as a prostitute, thinks that Cicero may have killed her lover. Some of the other women she hangs out with also think he is guilty.
But Alice thinks he is not guilty, and she tells her husband this when she tells him about meeting Cicero.
Violet also thinks he is innocent, and when she finds evidence that Robert’s death was caused by something else, she is almost sure that she is right.
Where does she find it?
After Robert died, his wife Emma moved to town, where she was given a place to sleep and stay safe. Emma is told by the Sheriff that the person who killed her husband will pay for what he did. But despite her sadness, she seems more interested in who her husband may have been sleeping with, and she asks the Sheriff to name Robert’s “favourite.”
Violet goes to see the woman while Emma is in town and finds a letter in her shack. It looks like Emma’s love interest wrote it.
So, could Robert’s murder have been done by Emma’s lover to get Robert out of the way? It’s possible, and Violet gives Thaddeus the note because she thinks it might have something to do with the crime.
The pastor goes to Cicero’s house and asks if he killed Robert. Cicero says that he is not guilty.
Emma is then met by the pastor and the sheriff. Emma tells them she wants to get out of town and start over somewhere else.
After this meeting, Thaddeus shows the Sheriff the letter and says that Cicero doesn’t seem like a murderer. But the Sheriff is still not willing to let the man out of jail. This is partly because he made a mistake years ago when he let out another prisoner who later killed his wife.
When the pastor leaves, the Sheriff tells his son, Jimmy, who works part-time as a deputy, about the love letter and tells Jimmy to look into it.
Is the killer still out there?
Yes! Violet is the next person to die when the killer slits her throat. We don’t find out how, but Cicero gets out of his cell at the same time, and the Sheriff naturally thinks he killed Violet. As the Sheriff and his men chase after Cicero, a chase starts. Cicero is shot after he jumps off his horse and onto a tree, but not before he is able to hide.
As the Sheriff and his men go in the wrong direction, Cicero makes his way back to town and into the church, where Thaddeus and Alice take care of him.
When Thaddeus got the bullet out of Cicero’s body, he thought it might not be the same one that killed Robert. To prove this, he digs up the body of the prospector, which confirms what he already thought.
At the same time, Jimmy goes to the whorehouse and pays Isabel to have sex with him. He kills her when she turns her back on him because he has more on his mind than sexual desire. Jimmy is the real killer, it’s now clear.
Why did the people kill each other?
We find out that Jimmy loved Emma and that Isabel asked him to kill Isabel. Emma probably told him to kill Isabel because she found out that the woman had been sleeping with Emma’s husband.
We also find out that Robert was killed by Jimmy and that Emma probably asked him to do it so that they could live together.
When it comes to poor Violet, Jimmy probably killed her because she found evidence.
What does Cicero do?
The Sheriff and his men keep looking for Cicero until they find him at the pastor’s house.
When Thaddeus refuses to give up Cicero, a fight breaks out and several of the Sheriff’s men are killed.
As the fight goes on, Cicero and Alice are able to get away on Cicero’s horse while Alice shoots at the men who are chasing them.
They get to a cabin, which is supposed to be a safe place, but Jimmy and another sheriff’s man find them there.
There is another gunfight, but when Cicero starts to run out of bullets, it looks like the end is near for him. He kills one of the men, but Jimmy is still shooting at him. But Thaddeus gets there just in time, shoots Jimmy, and then ties him up.
Does the Sheriff find out who killed the person?
They go to the sheriff’s office to tell him about Jimmy.
Jimmy says he is innocent, but when the Sheriff calls Emma to his office, it turns out that she and Jimmy worked together to kill someone because she couldn’t put all the blame on Jimmy.
Emma loses her temper and shoots the Sheriff. When Jimmy goes to help his father, Thaddeus starts shooting at him and kills him.
Jimmy dies in his father’s arms, and even though we don’t see it, it’s likely that his hurt father died soon after.
Thaddeus and Alice go outside to find Emma, who has now gotten away. Emma is about to shoot Thaddeus when Alice starts shooting and kills her.
As the movie comes to an end, Thaddeus and Alice say they will rebuild and improve the town. As they talk about what to do next, Cicero gets on his horse and rides away from the town that gave him more trouble than he could have imagined.
Yellowstone City is losing population. But when local gold prospector Dunnigan (Zach McGowan) finds gold, things might start to get better. That luck doesn’t last long, though, because he is soon killed, giving the town a mystery to solve. Sheriff Ambrose (Gabriel Byrne) doesn’t try to hide how racist he is when he blames the murder on visitor and now free man Cicero (Isaiah Mustafa) right away, even though the only hard evidence is that Cicero had some gold. Murder at Yellowstone City doesn’t directly address any of this racism, and it seems like the movie isn’t interested in exploring complicated issues from the time. But a gay couple is shown in a way that doesn’t make sense and doesn’t go anywhere.
When he wrote Murder at Yellowstone City, screenwriter Eric Belgau had a lot on his mind. He was determined to take all of his characters seriously and give them a story, even if it meant making the movie longer than it needed to be for such a simple plot (I assure you, you can predict who the killer reasonably early). Usually, that would be a good thing, but as you can see, the script isn’t doing anything interesting with its themes, and the characters are still subpar and have almost no personality, no matter how much backstory is given.