I guess those Lincolns and Texas Football Games aren’t doing it for Matthew McConaughey anymore. It had been almost 6 years since McConaughey didn’t show up in a real movie; I forgot how much I missed him. Cause when he’s on, like he is in The Lost Bus, he’s a bonafide movie star. Period. To the point where I expected him to huff, puff, and blow the fire away from that bus of school children.
The movie takes place on November 8, 2018, the day of the horrific Camp Fire what was the most destructive fire in California history. It started out relatively normal for Kevin McKay (Matthew McConaughey), fighting with dispatcher Ruby (Ashlie Atkinson) for more shifts, and with his son Shaun (played by McConaughey’s own son Levi) over a divorce driven move to Cali where Shaun doesn’t want to live. These distractions force Kevin to be late to return Bus #963 to the depot. As fate would have it, a blessing because teacher Mary Ludwig (America Ferrara) has 23 students whose parents couldn’t pick them up…from a school…that would be destroyed by the giant PG&E created wildfires.
Kevin McKay was the real hero of this day. But the movie hero is Paul Greengrass. The amazing filmmaker has been the king of taking real life stories and making them as cinematic as possible. He takes those decades of excellence and applies them magnificently to this film. It could be Jason Blum’s involvement (he’s a producer), but Greengrass makes the fire feel like a shapeshifting supernatural entity coming for anyone in its path. The handled drone camerawork really makes you feel like the fire is coming for the residents of Paradise as the wind has it fly across the area. We know this cause the first 20ish minutes Greengrass gives us a little mini preview of coming attractions for the movie we’re about to see, giving us just enough of a side plot with the firemen to use them as narrators to guide the audience along with the bus on its route to hopefully safety, and a tale of evacuated residents trying to foolishly outrun the blaze. After that, Greengrass brings his handheld cameras onboard bus 963 as Kevin goes to pick up Mary and the kids. The director is also a master of tone, weaving together frantic car chases, extremely creepy orange dread, and claustrophobic silence onboard the bus depending on where the story needs to go. Of course there’s dramatic license, but what Greengrass uses that license for is exciting as hell, and will leave you breathless from a lack of oxygen from the fires because you’re on that bus with Matthew McConaughey and America Ferrara.
This isn’t the most emotionally complex role either actor has taken, but they do right by the story. McConaughey masters the wide eyed helpless stare to great effect, making Kevin this man dragged into circumstances not of his own making. He’s a hot mess, but when things get real bad, you feel like Matty Ice will get the job done, like any hero should feel. Because McConaughey gets the big hero driving gig, America Ferrara has to play the emotional beats of the movie, cause let’s face it, if you were only cutting to 22 kids scared out of their mind you’d turn it off. Ferrara’s best moments are after a big setpiece, as she has to quietly gather herself before keeping the children calm. It’s wordless, effective work that keeps the stakes of the movie elevated sometimes moreso during the downtimes.
As inspiring as The Lost Bus can be in its best moments, there’s still lingering sadness as the movie concludes. Since 2018 there have been 4 other massive California fires, destroying either around the same or much more acreage damage as the 2018 Camp Fire. Greengrass alludes to that here through how ineffective and helpless emergency services can be when not planned for properly. While I applaud the Kevin McKay’s of the world, I’d rather they really exist going about their day to day lives without being forced to become heroes, a dream hopefully enough of us try to will into reality.