The Lost Bus, on Apple TV+

You would think after the 2018 “Camp Fire” killed 85 Californians, local politicians would have fixated on the dangers of forest fires—but they didn’t. Nor can they pretend they had no time to prepare contingencies for the 2024 California wildfires when real estate developer and civic leader Rick Caruso managed to arrange private firefighters and water tanks to safeguard the Palisades Village development. Paradise, California was at the epicenter of the painful lesson that went unlearned. It could have been far worse without Kevin McKay. Instead of a politician or a first-responder, he was a school bus driver who had to drive through Hell-on-Earth, inspiring Paul Greengrass’s true-life drama, The Lost Bus, which starts streaming on Apple TV+ this Friday.

You can blame global warming, or like Trump, the environmental policies that halted underbrush clearing. Either way, it won’t much matter to McKay once the fire starts blazing. He is a bit of a sad sack, who is particularly down since his father’s death a few months past and euthanizing his loyal dog during the opening minutes. Frankly, the latter probably hit him harder. Regardless, his petulant teenaged son Shaun is not about to stop arguing and sulking.

Nevertheless, McKay’s first instinct is to evacuate his son and somewhat infirm mother (played by McConaughey’s real life son and mother) when he first sees the black smoke choking the horizon. Yet, he agrees to pick up the 22 elementary school kids, who have no ride. Of course, he cannot take them alone, so by-the-book teacher Mary Ludwig reluctantly agrees to ride shotgun. Based on America Ferrera’s portrayal, she must be a real pain in the classroom.

Inevitably, each detour leads to another, forcing McKay’s bus into several precarious positions. Naturally, the spotty radio and cell service completely crash, leaving them cut-off from the rest of the world. They could really use a driver like Liam Neeson in the Ice Road movies, but the scruffy McKay turns out to be more resourceful than he looks.

In fact, Matthew McConaughey is aptly cast as the beleaguered McKay. McConaughey can both convincingly embody his working-class soul, while finding the tragic poetry in his existential struggles. Likewise, Yul Vasquez is credibly grizzled and commanding as Chief Martinez, whose role in the film is strictly business. Conversely, Ferrera’s character’s sole purpose seems to be making McKay’s job harder. Still, they do have a late but effective meeting-of-minds scene that helps build last-minute chemistry.

The sequences of runaway combustion look okay, but not great. Arguably, the little-seen documentary Paradise (ironically titled, given it follows insufficiently supplied Russian fire-fighters waging their own losing battle) more successfully captures the sensation of a raging woodland fire. However, Greengrass and cinematographer Pal Ulvik Rokseth vividly convey the ominousness of billowing black smoke.

It is nice to see a film that celebrates blue-collar heroism, which is genuinely how Greengrass and co-screenwriter Bruce Inglesby seem to relate to McKay’s story. They also largely avoid politics and ideology, except for some mushy and vague environmental throwaway references.

Nevertheless, their story has conspicuous gaps, like real-life hero firefighter Elliot Hopkins (played with conviction by Spencer Watson), who won California’s Medal of Valor, but disappears after the first act, while still in the midst of leading a convoy of stranded residents out of the fire-zone. Consequently, it would not be shocking if Apple eventually releases a significantly longer “director’s cut.”

As the current cut stands, there is a lot of grit and a fine performance from McConaughey, but everyone would have been better served by a few more revisions to the script, or another trip to the editing bay. Still good enough to stream (if you already subscribe), The Lost Bus premieres this Friday (10/3) on Apple TV+ (and it is currently playing in New York at the IFC Center).