TO HELL AND BACK (THE LOST BUS)

 

THE LOST BUS

Few filmmakers today are better at taking audiences into the eye of the storm than Paul Greengrass.

Whether it's the terror that unfolded on the streets of Derry on Bloody Sunday, in the skies of the United States on 9/11 or on the seas at the hands of Somali pirates or if it's simply the thrill of the hunt in the Bourne spy movies, Greengrass is probably the best at conjuring up authentic, high octane action sequences.

So it's with some glee that audiences will no doubt view his new collaboration with Matthew McConaghey and America Ferrera in a movie about the 2018 Camp Fire that raged through Butte County in northern California - one of the deadliest wildfires in the history of the state.

'The Lost Bus' is an account of how, against all the odds, bus driver Kevin McKay ferried 22 elementary schoolchildren and their teacher through some of the worst wildfires California had ever seen.

Working from a screenplay by Greengrass and Brad Inglesby, McConaghey portrays McKay as a man under extreme pressure even before sparks from electricity lines set alight the mountain terrain all around him.

Recently separated from his wife and a source of constant irritation for his teenage son, we see him bickering with them on the phone or in the log cabin of his elderly disabled mother, Kay McCabe McConaghey's Sherry.

When he isn't juggling the demands of a broken family, Kevin is being nagged by Ashlie Atkinson's school bus depot dispatcher Ruby to service his vehicle and file his paperwork.

After dropping some kids off on a school run, he is badgered to pick up a prescription of Tylenol for his son, Levi McConaghey's Shaun when fire engines and plumes of smoke start to appear around him in the northern Californian mountains.

Soon Kevin is recalled by the depot to help evacuate elementary schoolkids from the town of Paradise and get them to their anxious parents who cannot make the journey to collect them because it is deemed too risky.

Before long, he and America Ferrera's teacher Mary Ludwig are undertaking a perilous journey with a bus full of 22 terrified young children while Californian firefighters struggle to contain the blazes sweeping the forests.

Based on Lizzie Johnson's 2021 book 'Paradise: One Town's Struggle To Survive An American Wildfire,' Greengrass' account of the inferno that killed 85 people and ravaged 150,000 acres is one part a disaster movie like 'The Towering Inferno' or 'The Poseidon Adventure' and another a thrill ride like 'Speed'.

Where it differs from those classic Hollywood action movies is the director's adherence to his trademark neo realist style.

Thanks to Pal Ulvik Rokseth's visceral cinematography and William Goldenberg, Paul Rubell and Peter M Dudgeon's urgent editing, viewers feel every pang of stress experienced by McKay and Ludwig as they encounter one obstacle after another.

McConaghey and Ferrera are superb in the lead roles, convincingly portraying ordinary people asked to do extraordinary things in the most terrifying of circumstances.

But does the film hit the heights of 'Bloody Sunday,' 'United 93,' 'Captain Phillips' or even Greengrass's Jason Bourne movies?

Not quite, although it comes damn close.

It doesn't help that the film will be mostly be watched on Apple TV+ apps on TV sets and smartpads and not in the cinema where it really belongs.

But leaving this quibble aside, there are also moments in between the bravura, edge of your seat action sequences where 'The Lost Bus' threatens to slacken its pace and the banter between McConaghey and Ferrera comes awfully close to the kind you'd find in a stock Hollywood disaster movie.

Greengrass and his cast somehow manage to avoid tumbling into this trap - although the film could have done with being pared back by 10 or 15 minutes.

The reluctance of the film to explicitly make the connection between the disaster, subsequent Californian wildfires and climate change is also a little perplexing.

Nevertheless it's still an impressive achievement and the film confirms the Englishman as one of the most thrilling directors working in cinema today.

If only his movies were given a proper theatrical run instead of going quickly to streaming.

Films like 'The Lost Bus' deserve a chance to shine in their natural home.

('The Lost Bus' received its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 5, 2025 before being made available for streaming on Apple TV+ on October 3, 2025)