The Lost Bus ends up as one of the most satisfying studio films you’ll see this year.
Paul Greengrass doesn’t miss. The United 93 and Captain Phillips director turns another real-world tragedy into a nerve-wracking thriller in The Lost Bus, a mile-a-minute survival saga about the most destructive wildfire in California’s history. A tale of simple townsfolk rising to the occasion, its action movie structure never betrays its somber reality. Instead, its Hollywood stylings take what might otherwise be seen at a documentarian remove and make it feel intense and immediate, as the film thrusts its audience right in the middle of an unfolding disaster.
Greengrass and Brad Ingelsby’s screenplay draws from the non-fiction book Paradise by Lizzie Johnson, which follows the heroic efforts of blue collar bus driver Kevin McKay, a native of Paradise, California. When the movie begins, the divorced and driven McKay (Matthew McConaughey) struggles to make ends meet, as he balances the demands of his new job with the health of his ailing mother and moods of his teenage son — played by none other than McConaughey’s own mom and teenager, Kay and Levi. Their domestic drama doesn’t take up too much of the movie’s screentime, but it looms large over the proceedings, when the unassuming McKay is forced to approach mundane decisions as though they were grandiose moral dilemmas, like returning his school bus for routine maintenance or delivering Tylenol to his son.
However, as McKay drives between elementary school bus stops, a wildfire begins spreading through the nearby mountains, unbeknownst to him or to the town’s 27,000 residents. The Lost Bus becomes quickly and distinctly split between two very different kinds of drama that are sure to collide: the quickfire logistics of firefighters trying to battle the approaching flames, and McKay’s personal troubles, which don’t seem nearly as vital in comparison. However, establishing this backstory as though it were a part of the disaster ends up paying surprising dividends. In a more run-of-the-mill Hollywood movie, the broken home of the gruff, individualist action hero helps establish his future sense of duty before trouble arrives.
