Rumour has it that if Brad Pitt hadn’t thrown his weight behind F1 (read: put his movie star foot down), then the film would have bypassed the big screen and been a straight-to-streaming release. The high-octane film fittingly found a release in theatres in June, made pots of money and will arrive on Apple TV only in December. No such luck, however, for another Apple TV-backed project. After a limited release in theatres in the US, The Lost Bus found its way to the streaming service earlier this month.
Which is a shame because this Paul Greengrass film — in terms of both its visceral visuals and white-knuckle thriller DNA — deserved to be on the big screen in every part of the world. A larger-than-life canvas for the telling of a real-life incident doesn’t, however, mar the intimate human connections and emotions which lie at the heart of this film which is powered by Matthew McConaughey and strongly supported by America Ferrera.
Set in the Camp Fire of 2018 — considered one of the worst wildfires in American history which raged on for two weeks and wiped off whole towns besides causing damage to life and means of living — this particular nugget is based on a rescue detailed in a section of Lizzie Johnson’s book Paradise: One Town’s Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire.
And what a story it is! Brought alive with horrific authenticity by Greengrass from a script he co-wrote with Brad Inglesby (Mare of Easttown), this is a moving account of human resilience fighting tooth and nail against all odds and emerging triumphant in the end.
Greengrass — the man behind real-to-reel cinema like United 93, Green Zone and Captain Phillips — brings in his signature no-holds-barred style (with cinematographer Pal Ulvik Rokseth, along with the visual effects team going above and beyond the memo), making it one of the most effectively made disaster films in recent times.
A weather-beaten McConaughey plays downbeat bus driver Kevin McCay, whose fateful day has already started on the wrong note — both at home (McConaughey’s real-life son Levi McConaughey stars as his son here, while his own mother Kay McCabe McConaughey plays his screen mother) and work. Even as what starts off as a seemingly small fire quickly starts devouring the area, Kevin is called in for an emergency — to transport a busload of 22 primary school kids to a safe pickup zone. Accompanying them, on Kevin’s insistence, is their resolute teacher Mary Ludwig (Ferrera). But what should have been an easy ride — of course, under normal circumstances — turns out to be a heart-pounding mix of scintillating spectacle and raw emotion, allowing the viewer to barely breathe. Some scenes are so immersively mounted and shot that you will feel that you barely escaped the flames yourself.
The Lost Bus — with McConaughey in perfect control over his craft — hurtles towards a predictable, feel-good end but it is the fiery and frantic fight to get to it is what makes this film a perfect balance of disaster and drama, without one overpowering the other.
My favourite disaster film of the last five years is... Tell t2@abp.in
