The Lost Bus review: This 'enthralling' wildfire drama 'immerses us in noise, heat and danger'

Matthew McConaughey and America Ferrera star in the true story of a heroic rescue which took place in California in 2018. The film is even more "visceral" than genuine news footage.

News videos of California wildfires have shown jaw-dropping devastation in recent years. But horrifying though they are, those reports are not as visceral as the experience of watching The Lost Bus. Paul Greengrass' enthralling film – with Matthew McConaughey as a school bus driver trying to get children to safety as a fire blazes around them, and America Ferrera as a teacher on board – is based on the true story of that rescue during the 2018 Camp Fire, not to be confused with the fires earlier this year that destroyed so much of the Pacific Palisades and Altadena neighbourhoods of California. Greengrass immerses us in the fires in all their noise, heat and apparently inescapable danger.

Because the real story is known, we can approach the film assured that everyone gets out alive. The film is ultimately about heroic actions. That doesn't lessen the tension, as burning tree limbs fall in the bus's path and the sky darkens with smoke so that day looks like night. The Lost Bus demonstrates how powerfully drama can illuminate a story we might have thought we knew.

The film stays so close to reality that the main characters' names have not been changed. McConaughey plays Kevin McKay, who responds to a dispatcher's urgent call for any bus near the school, in the fire's evacuation zone. Ferrera is Mary Ludwig, a teacher who shepherds 22 small children onto the bus that is meant to take them to where their parents are waiting in a designated area. But the fire is already so far out of control that the journey is more harrowing than anyone expects. As the film depicts in some alarming early scenes, a faulty power line sparked the fire, and a fierce wind sent it spreading so fast that the firefighters couldn't contain it. (Throughout, to create the dramatic fire scenes, the production safely set gas fires, sometimes enhanced by CGI and footage of real fires.)

Greengrass, known for his three Jason Bourne films and the fact-based stories Captain Phillips and United 93, brings all of his expertise to bear here, generating suspense from volatile action and the characters' emotional responses to danger. The noise of the fire is a loud relentless roar, an especially effective way to let us share their experience. Kevin has to drive along winding back roads, where at times the smoke is so thick he can barely see. Phone service and the bus's radio go down, cutting off communication with the outside world. Kevin and Mary are on their own.

Putting children in jeopardy can be risky for a film, leading to cheap emotion. But while Greengrass shows the children's fears, he avoids that pitfall by staying focused on Kevin and Mary as they grapple with how to escape and with their own growing anxiety. Ferrera gracefully switches between the two sides of Mary, who remains a calming influence on the children even while her hair becomes matted with sweat and she tells Kevin that she is afraid she might not see her own son again.

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McConaughey displays his usual likable magnetism, and leans into his character's determination. Kevin feels that he is a failure as a husband, a father and at his job, and he sees the rescue as his chance to do something that matters. The film is set up as his redemption story, and its one flaw is the way it overloads him with problems at the start. His boss (Ashlie Atkinson) is threatening to let him go for being late. He has a belligerent teenage son, an angry ex-wife, a sick mother who is in a wheelchair, and he has even had to put his dog down the night before the fire. Scene for scene those episodes are credible, and they include supporting actors who are part of McConaughey's real family: his son Levi plays Kevin's son, Shaun, and they have a realistic father-son shouting match. But any one of his problems might have been enough. Piling them up gets the story off to a rocky start.

Once we are on the bus, though, which is where we are for most of the film, it takes off and never flags. Occasionally Greengrass cuts to the children's waiting parents, but he doesn't milk those scenes for melodrama as so many lesser films might have, and that restraint enhances the tautness and intensity.

And Greengrass avoids preaching. At a certain point the fire chief (a composite character played by Yul Vasquez) is out of fresh resources and makes the hard choice that his team should rescue people and stop trying to contain the fire. At a press conference he pointedly says that these fires keep happening and are only likely to get worse, but that is the only mention of an environmental cause for the wildfires. The Lost Bus doesn't have to bludgeon viewers with a message or with its timely resonance. Greengrass lets us feel it.

★★★★☆

The Lost Bus will be released in cinemas on 19 September and will be available on Apple TV+ on 3 October.

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