The Lost Bus
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Rating: R
Run Time: 2 hours 9 minutes
Stars: Matthew McConaughey, America Ferrera
Writers: Brad Ingelsby, Paul Greengrass, Lizzie Johnson
Director: Paul Greengrass
In theaters and streaming on Apple TV+
Reviewed at the Toronto International Film Festival
Give me a minute. I’m hyperventilating. Is there a paper bag around here I can breathe into? Okay. Whew. Better now. Thanks.
I’ve just emerged into the daylight after a screening of The Lost Bus, director Paul Greengrass’s pulse-pounding “based on a true story” account of a school bus driver (Matthew McConaughey) who volunteers to drive into the flaming jaws of California’s 2018 Camp Fire to rescue 22 children and their teacher (America Ferrera) from their soon-to-be-engulfed elementary school.
Also, I’m pretty sure he rescued me, too. I feel like my lungs are full of smoke and my eyes are stinging from airborne grit. And I think my eyebrows are singed.
The Lost Bus is one wild ride. But thanks to strong performances by a core of fine actors and a sprinkling of people who were actually there for the fires, the film is propelled by profoundly human authenticity.
At the outset, Kevin McKay (McConaughey) is already having one miserable life: He can’t seem to hold down a job, his wife has left him, his son can’t stand him, and he’s struggling to pay the medical bills for his ill mother.
Kevin’s extracurricular demons have made him one of the more unreliable members of the Paradise School District bus driving corps, what with trips to his kid’s principal’s office and taking his mom to doctor appointments. But he’s a hard worker, and his otherwise all-business dispatcher seems to have endless patience with him (she’s wonderfully played by Beth Bowersox, who was the actual 911 dispatcher in Paradise that fateful day).
As wildfires bear down on the town, an unauthorized detour in his empty school bus (to buy Tylenol for his ailing son) puts Kevin reasonably close to an elementary school that’s been ordered to evacuate. The pickup goes uneventfully — even though Kevin is a tad frustrated by the kids’ teacher, Mary (perkily played by America Ferrera) insisting on having her students line up in an orderly fashion before leaving their classroom. She is, of course, simply trying to avoid panic, but with the fires of Hell descending, every second counts. Worse, with communication lines shut down, Kevin doesn’t know the planned drop-off point has been moved well out of town, away from the flames.
Finding the drop-off point empty, Kevin and Mary pull out a map and start to strategize an escape route. There are no good choices, and for the next hour or so we ride along for one harrowing dead end after another, including one perilous moment when an armed refugee emerges from the smoke and tries to hijack the bus.
The two grownups make a great team: Kevin utilizing his backroads knowledge, Mary doing her best to keep the kids from knowing they are one fallen tree away from incineration. The stars play it absolutely straight: McConaughey’s Kevin is no hero, just a guy who’s got a steadily narrowing range of choices. Ferrera’s Mary outwardly hews to her all-for-the-children default while quietly questioning her long-ago decision to never leave Paradise.
Norwegian cinematographer Pål Ulvik Rokseth — known for his thrilling work on disaster films — manages to create a claustrophobic atmosphere inside the bus while never letting us forget the inferno that surrounds it. A three-man editing team led by Oscar winner William Goldenberg (Argo) and two-time nominee Paul Rubell (Collateral, The Insider) flips seamlessly between the dark-as-night, smoke-shrouded burn area and the brilliantly lit outdoor command centers, weaving in actual footage of the fire that killed 85 people, displaced 50,000 more, and destroyed more than 18,000 structures.
If you expect Hollywood to turn out a big-budget film in which there is any chance 22 children and their teacher will perish in a forest fire, you should probably not pursue a career in marketing. But Greengrass (Captain Phillips, United 93, Bloody Sunday) is the reigning master of telling stories the endings of which we already know.
The resolution of The Lost Bus may never be in doubt, but you will never forget the fiery, frantic, fantastically fraught ride to the end.
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