For all its technical bravado and fearsome danger, perhaps the most immediately striking thing about The Lost Bus is, ‘hey, Matthew McConaughey’s in this’. It’s been six years since Hollywood’s premier Texan has made a live action appearance in anything on the big or small screen, finally brought back into the acting fold for a tale of an overwhelmed everyman-turned-hero in Paul Greengrass’s terrifying take on true-life tale of the 2018 Camp Fire that annihilated a series of towns in northern California. It’s good to have McConaughey back, his mix of wiry intensity and easy charm anchoring a chaotic survival story that’s at its best when flames and fear do the talking.
Slotting into Greengrass’s particular brand of ‘recent history thriller’, The Lost Bus has McConaughey as Kevin McKay, a school bus driver in the ironically-named town of Paradise who became the last lifeline for 22 stranded elementary school kids as the fire destroyed the entire town. It’s in the thick of the action that The Lost Bus is most effective (it is soon streaming on Apple TV, but this is a film made for the big screen if you can catch it there), the controlled panic of Kevin and teacher Mary (America Ferrera) mixing well with the sheer screaming terror of the kids.
All the best performance moments are wordless, from Kevin’s moments of reluctantly steeling himself as the situation keeps deteriorating to the immensely sweet little snippets of the children coming together as a team to keep each other safe (their instant trust in Kevin is both moving and infectious). Whenever it gets talkier, Brad Ingelsby’s script starts to get clunky, though, with too many exposition dumps for backstories and broad strokes family drama on Kevin’s end that, despite the fun touch of his elderly mum and surly teenage son being played by McConaughey’s actual relations, never really compels. At over two hours, The Lost Bus is a little too long for what it is, though the time spent with the completely overmatched fire department, represented by Chief Martinez (Yul Vasquez) does give a stomach-lurching sense of the incomprehensible scale of disaster.
If there is a true standout character, it’s the fire itself. Greengrass gives the inferno a mind of its own, shooting from the POV of the blaze itself as it stalks across the dry, wind-battered landscape. The fire is just everywhere, surrounding the bus like a hostile invading army constantly tightening the noose of a deadly pincer manoeuvre, and the urgency and panic and choking smoke and heat pour off the screen, with occasional archival footage letting us know that Greengrass is not exaggerating anything in his apocalyptic vision.
It’s pretty impossible to resist The Lost Bus when it’s in pure immersion and spectacle mode, more than making up for the rambling set-up sequences (it’s kind of a while before the actual core premise of ‘school bus lost in the flames’ kicks off). It’s the closest you’ll ever want to come to actually being in a wildfire – Greengrass and DP Pal Ulvik Rokseth capturing not just the scorching flames but also the astounding *dark* brought by the omnipresent smoke – while also finding rays of hope in ordinary people’s extraordinary bravery to help near-strangers in crisis.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 