It’s a traditional November day in Northern California when Paul Greengrass‘ newest slice of harrowing true-life action-drama, “The Misplaced Bus” kicks off — a minimum of, a traditional November day within the late aughts in a drought-choked nation. The wind whips, the vegetation snaps, {the electrical} towers howl. It’s been over 200 days because it rained. The Camp Hearth, California’s deadliest and most damaging wildfire, is just a few hours off from igniting and ripping via the city of Paradise and its neighbors, however the stage is about. It has been for weeks. Hell, it has been for years.
Down within the city, Kevin McKay’s (Matthew McConaughey) life is already on the point of destruction. The details of his life are offered bluntly: born and raised in Paradise, he solely returned when his long-estranged father died, and he’s now caught serving to his vaguely ailing mom (his real-life mom, Kay McConaughey), coping with a teenage son who loathes him (his real-life son Levi McConaughey), wrestling with an ex-wife who can’t stand him (Kimberli Flores), and making an attempt to scrap collectively no matter cash he can earn from his new job driving a college bus. The night time earlier than the fireplace breaks out, he has to place his beloved canine down. That’s the place this begins.
Tailored from Lizzie Johnson’s ebook “Paradise: One City’s Battle to Survive an American Wildfire,” Greengrass and Brad Inglesby’s script takes each a macro and micro have a look at the hellish occasions of November 2018, ostensibly constructing them round what Kevin will finally be referred to as to do. As the fireplace builds outdoors of city, Kevin’s life continues to go off the rails, and Greengrass successfully builds stress round twinning issues: the morning the fireplace lastly ignites, Kevin is busy making an attempt to complete up his morning bus route and get some Tylenol for an ailing Shaun. Simply that: Tylenol, one thing so fundamental and so important, however because the seeming impossibility of Kevin managing to drag even that off tightens, so too does the ring of fireside engulfing Paradise and past.
Communication breakdowns of all types rule supreme within the first act of “The Misplaced Bus.” Simply as Kevin can’t talk together with his ex and son, the city of Paradise struggles to ship out official evacuation orders and the Cal Hearth staff tasked with taking over the fireplace (led by an exquisite Yul Vasquez as fireplace chief Ray Martinez) are diminished to screaming radio chatter. By the point all of the modes of communication truly go down, nobody has been in a position to successfully share what they want for fairly a while.
That’s dangerous information for the 22 college students left at Ponderosa Elementary College whose mother and father have been unable to succeed in them in time to fulfill an evacuation order that has already morphed and altered far past what many of the city’s residents can moderately be anticipated to know. The one individual between them and oblivion: Kevin’s beleaguered boss Ruby (a stellar Ashlie Atkinson), who has all however given up on Kevin actually this very day, and is surprised when he solutions the decision to select up the youngsters and instructor Mary Ludwig (America Ferrera) and take them to what they imagine is security.
As Kevin, a really reluctant hero who can’t escape his basic goodness, makes an attempt to drive the youngsters and Mary throughout city, the Camp Hearth explodes. Toggling between Martinez and his staff (their roiling, makeshift mission management area a nerve-jangling marvel), Kevin and Mary and their motley crew of children, and the monstrous fireplace engulfing all of them, “The Misplaced Bus” makes an attempt to juggle each the bigger story (this goddamned fireplace) and smaller examples of the horror and heroism that additionally occurred that day. Subplots are picked up and dropped, together with a gutting sequence involving a primary responder and the group of residents he makes an attempt to avoid wasting, a roving band of looters (looting, pardon our language, fucking what?), and the rattled mother and father ready for the youngsters at a staging location Kevin doesn’t even know exists.
The larger-scale drama is definitely efficient — what Greengrass and his staff of craftsmen and visible artists have been in a position to do with wind is a miracle, and that’s to say nothing of the fireplace itself — and so evocative and terrifying that phrases fail to do it justice. At a number of factors in the course of the movie, this critic was so struck by the size, by the sheer viciousness of the fireplace that I couldn’t assist however suppose, “How the hell did anybody survive this?” Greengrass has at all times excelled at turning real-life horrors into heart-stopping motion pictures, however this specific imaginative and prescient of Hell on Earth is on one other degree. It’s as actual because it will get.
That Greengrass and Ingelsby would need to zero their focus in additional tightly on McKay and Ludwig’s story (producer Jamie Lee Curtis was additionally a serious proponent of centering the movie on the story of the bus itself) is comprehensible sufficient. For a catastrophe so huge and so unfathomable, some kind of grounding feels crucial, some little level to carry on to, some faces to recollect, however even the precise story of the bus and its short-term inhabitants feels a contact too small for the grand scale Greengrass is engaged on right here. For as soon as, zooming in proves to be prohibitive, solely in seeing the scope of this mind-bending tragedy does Greengrass really discover his most vital story.
Grade: B
“The Misplaced Bus” premiered on the 2025 Toronto Worldwide Movie Pageant. Apple Unique Movies releases it in in choose theaters on Friday, September 19, earlier than debuting globally on its streaming platform on Friday, October 3.
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