‘The Lost Bus’ Review: Paul Greengrass’s Roller Coaster Ride Through the 2018 Camp Fire

Paul Greengrass’s The Lost Bus recounts the true story of school bus driver Kevin McKay (Matthew McConaughey), who drove 22 children to safety during the 2018 Camp Fire, the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history. As is his wont, Greengrass brings a peripatetic restlessness to the material, and while that helps to give the film an often thrilling sense of verisimilitude, the cliché-stuffed screenplay, co-written by Greengrass and Brad Ingelsby, too often plays against the intended solemnity of the project.

Right out of the gate, The Lost Bus saddles Kevin with a movie-ready sense of desperation that no amount of method casting or allegiance to the facts of the real story can distract us from. At home, he struggles to take care of his ailing mother, Sherry (Kay McConaughey), and tries fruitlessly to appeal to his angry teenage son, Sean (Levi McConaughey). At one point, when Sean claims to be home sick from school and Kevin assumes that he’s faking it, the two get in a fight that ends with the boy screaming, “I wish you were dead!”

Immediately it seems as if the filmmakers feel the need to whip up a tempest in Kevin’s personal life, framing the angst that results from it as what fuels the man’s later chutzpah. Beyond his troubles at home, Kevin is harangued at work by his boss, Ruby (Ashlie Atkinson), then harshly turned down when he pleads for extra shifts to help pay his mounting bills. And if things couldn’t get any worse, the vet (Ginger T. Rex) calls him before all of this to inform him that his beloved dog’s cancer has spread and that the animal needs to be put down.

“I just can’t seem to catch a break,” Kevin mutters not long into the film, as if cognizant of the script not cutting him any slack. All the while, the wildfire, which begins with a faulty electric line, quickly and visibly rages toward his hometown of Paradise. Naturally, it’s precisely when it feels that he’s been pushed to his breaking point that Ruby calls over the radio for an empty bus to go pick up some children and their teacher, Mary Ludwig (America Ferrera), at a school in the danger zone. “If you do this, you’ll have done well,” Ruby tells Kevin when he accepts, transparently underlining the opportunity for Kevin to redeem himself.

But with the roads jammed, getting to safety proves difficult, and Kevin, who’s without cellphone or radio service, soon finds himself having to navigate a blazing inferno. Through it all, Greengrass brings his customarily nerve-wringing style to his depiction of Kevin’s ordeal and the escalating destruction. As the world burns and crumbles around our hero’s bus, you may even be reminded of ’90s blockbusters like Dante’s Peak. But should you be?

Since United 93, people have taken umbrage with the too-soonness and too-muchness of Greengrass’s approach—an exploitation of tragic events that he’s made into a cottage industry. And considering the existential threat that ongoing wildfires currently pose for the planet, the particular question of whether a docudrama about the 2018 Camp Fire should be so hard-wired with movie-movie thrills lingers after the credits have rolled.

Perhaps because Greengrass isn’t one for explicit commentary, the moment when the Cal Fire battalion chief (Yul Vázquez) updates the public on the wildfire at a press conference stands out. After delivering his address, he breaks his composure to warn that the fires get bigger and more frequent each year and “we’re damn fools” for not doing anything about it. It’s an impassioned plea, but the speed with which Greengrass gets back to milking thrills is a reminder that he’s drawn to real-life tragedy only insofar as he can use it as a backdrop to a hero’s journey, while also making us feel as if we’re witnessing it from inside a roller coaster ride.