3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Lost Bus

2025, Paul Greengrass (Jason Bourne) -- download

Apparently I like movies about brush fires? But where as Only the Brave was about the brave men fighting the fires, this focused on a bus driver who chooses to save some elementary school kids, when he could have just escaped with his own family. Unlike the former, he actually lives, and this is less biopic and more just a dramatization of a very heroic act. 

Maybe, fire-fighting in the forest adjacent movies, like "Those Who Wish Me Dead"?

Also, apparently Greengrass is the accessible drama-meets-action director that can stir me from hiatus-is. As I am wont to do, after stepping away from films for a little while, settling back into it with a clear Hollywood production, I cannot help but see the trappings of the Purple Suits, but in this case, its not so much the annoyance at interference, but just the recognition of how a modern movie has to be made. 

OK, Paradise, California. One of those northern California towns in the wooded hills that is pretty much the middle of nowhere. The movie begins with high winds and waving, sparking power lines that lead to a grass fire at the base of the tower -- apparently IRL the power company was sued for causing this fire; and they lost. We also meet Kevin McKay (Matthew McConaughey, Mud), a down-on-his-luck sad-sack driving a school bus, pissing off his ex-wife and his boss constantly, trying to reconnect with an irascible teenage son, and not having much luck. He recently moved back to Paradise to help with his ailing mother, after his dad's passing. We get the idea he wasn't leaving much behind. These are all trappings of the clear Hollywood movie I mentioned. 

McConaughey does this kind of role so well -- he always seems to be a bit down-on-his-luck, but to be fair to mid-range Hollywood accessibility, he isn't given much range in this character -- drive the bus, play a fuck-up who obviously redeems himself, BUT given the man's talent, he plays it entirely believably.

Speaking of down-on-his-luck fuck-ups, I wonder if he has ever played a grimy PI ? I mean, yes, "True Detective", but what about gritty, never-shaved, back-alley or strip-mall detective?

The fire spreads, the trucks try to roll in, but the fire is in such an isolated place in the hills, they cannot reach. Fire fighting Chief Martinez (Yul Vazquez, Midnight, Texas) quickly coordinates response but there are challenges everywhere: high winds make aerial bombardment ineffective, the aforementioned accessibility issue, and the high winds cause it to move VERY quickly into populated communities. Evacuations are called for, but even the emergency coordination is chaotic & confused leading to 23 elementary students left at a school in the fire's path. Meanwhile Kevin is having a rough day -- his boss is angry at him (again), his kid is ill and his ex is yelling at him on the phone, and his mother is barely capable of taking care of herself. But when forced to make a choice, he swings his bus around and heads for the kids.

That's what the movie is about -- that fevered, hampered effort to get the kids away from the danger to a safe place. The thing about this movie is that it is well-backed, even for mid-range drama. Thus, the depiction is well sorted out, and the cinematography and lighting is on-point. The mid-morning bright sunlight quickly gives way to dusk's gloom, and then full on moonless-sky-night, as the town is enveloped by the clouds of black smoke. Everyone is evacuating, cell towers have collapsed and even the emergency management system has broken down. Its full on panic and the roads are snarled. What should be a quick 10 minute drive to safety ends up being a scramble to find an expedient path before the fire overruns them.

At Kevin's side is teacher Mary Ludwig (America Ferrera, Barbie) and their journey together is not idyllic. Crying children, flames and smoke, cut-off paths, and fire-engulphed neighbourhoods crush even her steely will to protect those kids. I repeat, the typical trappings are there -- the pep talks, the sharing of personal stuff between the two adults, the bonding between Kevin and one boy from a divorced family. At least Greengrass handles it all well, so my eye-rolling is at a minimum, and all that was easily supplanted by the colour and the lighting of it all. They are literally passing through the Fires of Hell, and you feel it.

I mean, we know they survive. They bust through the wall of flames to the almost surreal calm beyond. But the movie is kind enough to not just end there, giving Kevin a chance be acknowledged for his bravery, before he slinks off to check on his family and feel the relief he has needed all day. Kevin's problems aren't fixed, he is still who he is, and now he has lost his family home. But he survived, and he performed an admirable act. Maybe that one act can make up for many things; but he has to make it matter.