It is a normal November day in Northern California when Paul Greengrass‘Latest record of upsetting real action drama, “The Lost Bus” starts -At least on a normal November day in the late Afthts in a dried nitrogen country. The wind whips, the vegetation is snapped, the electric towers howl. It has been over 200 days since it was raining. The camp fire, California’s deadliest and most destructive wildfire, is a few hours free from igniting and ripping through the city of Paradise and its neighbors, but the scene is canceled. It’s been for weeks. Hell, it’s been for years.
Down in the city, Kevin Mckays (Matthew McConaughey) Life is already on the verge of destruction. Facts in his life are presented unclear: born and raised in paradise, he only returned when his long destroyed father died, and he is now stuck to help his vague seven -way mother (his real mother, Kay McConaughey), and he can’t stand a teenager. Trying to scrape all the money he can make from his new job running a school bus. The night before the fire breaks out, he has to put down his beloved dog. It is there this start-up.
Adapted from Lizzie Johnson’s book “Paradise: One Town’s struggle to survive an American wildfire”, takes Greengrass and Brad Inglesby’s script both a macro and micro -viewing on the sacred events in November 2018 and seemingly to build them around what Kevin will eventually be called to do. As the fire builds outside the city, Kevin’s life continues to get off the rails, and Greengrass effectively builds tension around twin problems: the morning that the fire finally ignited, Kevin is busy trying to finish his morning bus route and Get some Tylenol for a harmful Shaun. Just that: Tylenol, something so basic and so important, but as the seemingly impossibility for Kevin manages to pull even it also sters, so does the ring of fire paradise and then.
Communication distributions of all kinds control the highest in the first act of ”The lost bus. “Just as Kevin cannot communicate with his ex and son, the city of Paradise is struggling to send out official evacuation orders and the Cal Fire team, which has the task of taking on the fire (led by a wonderful Yul Vasquez as fire manager Ray Martinez) is reduced to screaming radio chats. actually Go down, no one has been able to share what they need for quite some time.
This is bad news for the 22 students left at Ponderosa Elementary School whose parents have not been able to reach them in time to meet an evacuation order that has already changed and changed far beyond what most of the city’s inhabitants can reasonably be expected to know. The only person between them and Oblivion: Kevin’s Beleagued Boss Ruby (a Stellar Ashlie Atkinson), which has only given up Kevin literally just this dayAnd is stunned when responding to the call to pick up the children and teacher Mary Ludwig (America Ferrera) and take them to what they believe is security.
Like Kevin, a truly reluctant hero who cannot escape his basic goodness, tries to drive the children and Mary over the city, Camp Fire explodes. Switch between Martinez and his team (their roiling, provisional mission control space a nerve jangling), Kevin and Mary and their varied crew of children, and the monstrous fire that surrounded them all, “the lost bus” tries to juggle both the larger story (this dag. Subscribes are picked up and released, including a sling sequence involving a first responder and the group with citizens he tries to save, a preying band of looters (looting, forgive our language, Damn what?), and the laughing parents waiting for the children at a staging site Kevin doesn’t even know.
The larger drama is undoubtedly effective-what Greengrass and his team of craftsmen and visual artists have been able to do with wind is a miracle, and that is to say nothing about Fire Yourself – and so atmospheric and scary that words do not do it justice. At several points below filmThis critic was so beaten by the scale, by the great evil in the fire that I couldn’t help but think: “How the hell did it any survive this? ” Greengrass has always distinguished themselves to turn real screaming into heart -stopped movies, But this special vision of hell on earth is on another level. It’s as real as it gets.
The fact that Greengrass and Ingelsby would like to reset their focus in more closely on McKay and Ludwig’s story (producer Jamie Lee Curtis was also an important advocate for centering the film on the story of the bus itself) is sufficiently understandable. For a disaster that is so large and so inconceivable, some kind of foundation feels necessary, a small point to hold on to, some faces to remember, but even the actual story of the bus and its temporary inhabitants know a touch too small for the large scale that Greengrass works with here. For once, zooming in turns out to be insurmountable, just to see the extent of this mind -bending tragedy, Greengrass really finds its most important story.
Rating: B.
“The Lost Bus” premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival 2025. Apple Original Films let it in selected theaters on Friday 19 September, before debuting globally on their streaming platform on Friday 3 October.
Want to keep you updated on IndieWire’s movie Reviews And critical thoughts? Subscribe here To our recently launched newsletter, in review by David Ehrlich, where our main film critic and Head Review’s editor rounds off the best new reviews and streaming choices along with some exclusive Musings – all only available for subscribers.
