Rent The Lost Bus on Amazon Video (paid link) // Buy the book (paid link)
Written by: Brad Ingelsby and Paul Greengrass (screenplay), Lizzie Johnson (book "Paradise: One Town's Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire")
Directed by: Paul Greengrass
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, America Ferrera, Yul Vazquez
Rated: R
Watch the trailer
Plot
A wayward school bus driver and a dedicated school teacher battle to save twenty-two children from a terrifying inferno.
Verdict
It's a typical disaster movie that hits all of the beats you'd expect. Things go from okay to terrible in no time. The protagonists face danger all around and become encircled. Just at the edge of their demise, they figure out a way to escape. In the end everything is okay and the protagonists resolve to live life to the fullest.
It depends.
Review
Greengrass's last movie was News of the World (2020), but he also directed United 93 (2006) and Captain Phillips (2013). The movie and book are based on the 2018 Camp Fire which was the largest and deadliest in California's history.
Kevin (Matthew McConaughey) works as a school bus driver while taking care of his ailing mother, his teenage son, paying off his father's medical bills, and even his dog is sick. This guy can't catch a break. He needs more hours, but being new he's at the bottom of the list. While he is his family's sole provider, he does completely shirk his job and lie to his boss about where he is, granted his son is sick and he's panicked.
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| Matthew McConaughey plays Kevin |
The town is very dry and a downed power line starts a fire. Of course it's windy which causes the fire to spread large distances. Everything that can go wrong does. The entire area is being evacuated, but at one of the schools twenty-two kids don't have transportation. Obviously Kevin is nearby having diverted to take his son medicine, and he's the only driver nearby so he changes course to pick up the kids. Kevin is paired with by the book teacher Mary (America Ferrera). Despite the impending danger, she doesn't share Kevin's urgency. He's a get it done type.
Once this gets underway it's nearly constant tension. Kevin maneuvers the bus through slow traffic with smoke and fire on all sides as kids scream. With communication down, no one knows anything. Kevin is driving this lost bus trying to evacuate while traffic blocks many roads. Meanwhile the fire department can't provide help due to narrow roads and a quickly expanding fire. The bus reaches a point where it's surrounded with nowhere to go.
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| Matthew McConaughey plays Kevin |
We assume the bus will make it, that's how these movies work, but this does make you wonder. This bus can't proceed. The ambient temperature is getting dangerously high with the bus walls getting hot. How will they possibly get out of this? I thought Kevin stopped the bus because they were surrounded by fire. Apparently it just cut off. I don't know why he didn't try to get it running earlier. I guess we needed the bus to cut off so Kevin and Mary could share their personal regrets so that later in the movie when they're safe they can remind each other of this moment.
Kevin gets the bus running and drives out of the fire. I don't know how he even saw the road. He gets the kids to safety, and everyone that was worried about him is relieved. This movie is nearly exactly what you'd expect. It follows the generic disaster movie outline, but doesn't offer much more.
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