‘The Misplaced Bus’ evaluation: 2018 Camp fireplace turns into McConaughey catastrophe film

Disasters are actual — additionally, lately, frighteningly frequent, be they epic confluences of nature and negligence or the murderous and preventable sort. And with regards to catastrophe films, it’s onerous to know what the suitable degree of exploitation is.

After all, director Paul Greengrass might by no means be confused with the unseriousness of producer Irwin Allen (“The Towering Inferno”) or filmmaker Roland Emmerich (“The Day After Tomorrow”), ringmasters who most popular heaping helpings of A-listers on slick, costly calamities. Somewhat, when Greengrass, coming from documentaries, tackles darkish days of mass casualty, they are usually true tales like “United 93” and “Bloody Sunday.” His stripped-down, jagged model, absent marquee names and centered on such points as terrorism and neighborhood, brings clever urgency to the unfathomable.

Together with his new movie “The Misplaced Bus,” nevertheless, starring Matthew McConaughey and America Ferrera, in regards to the real-life effort to avoid wasting a busload of schoolchildren from the 2018 Camp fireplace, a wildfire that may destroy most of Paradise, Calif., Greengrass is attempting to merge the 2 sensibilities. This time he mixes star heroism with you-are-there spectacle and the outcomes may be galvanizing if awkwardly framed.

“The Misplaced Bus” isn’t as potent as Greengrass’ “Captain Phillips,” wherein Tom Hanks anchored a re-created actuality no much less pulse-pounding than any motion blockbuster. As an alternative the director appears to be in a programmatic mode. There are scenes of nerve-jangling terror that weld you to your seat, however they’re sandwiched in between so much that feels very a lot sculpted for three-act character arc impact by Greengrass and co-writer Brad Ingelsby.

McConaughey performs Paradise bus driver Kevin McKay, whose life is nearly comically scripted to return off as particularly challenged earlier than one lick of flame will get close to it: strapped for money, dying canine, not too long ago useless father (no love misplaced), sullen teenage son (love misplaced), ex-wife (additionally sad) and a memory-ailing mom. However on the afternoon of Nov. 18 because the fires attain japanese Paradise, Kevin’s is the one bus that may meet a request from his dispatcher (Ashlie Atkinson): Choose up stranded elementary schoolkids and evacuate them to security.

A failed dad feeling the load of sudden accountability, Kevin corrals as co-chaperone a schoolteacher (America Ferrera). Although Mary is a mom desperate to get to her personal little one, she’s keen to assist. The occasional lower to Yul Vazquez as the fireplace chief spearheading rescue efforts, nevertheless, is that this film’s barometer of more and more dangerous information. As smoke shortly darkens the day and the unstoppable, town-hopping fireplace hems within the bus, reducing off routes, the journey takes a dystopian flip, elevating the stakes and alarm ranges to unimaginable heights. (Eaton and Palisades survivors, truthful warning — you had been by no means going to observe this anyway.)

McConaughey is stable casting, his unshowy working-class fortitude barely tinged with concern. In his and Ferrera’s sturdy presence and within the serrated frenzy of Greengrass’ modifying model, a shorter, tighter “The Misplaced Bus” would nonetheless maintain loads of dread and dramatic resilience. The fireplace sequences alone, captured within the hellish fuzz of Pål Ulvik Rokseth’s cinematography, are pinnacles of this practical-meets-digital-effects self-discipline. However Kevin’s dippy redemption arc, doled out midperil in tortured glances and compelled dialogue, drags us out of the depth.

It’s additionally odd that the activist-minded Greengrass didn’t do extra with so company a villain: legally accountable utility PG&E, represented within the film by an ineffectual go well with who’s briefly yelled at. Overlook that redemption story — Greengrass might have leaned much more into these motion tropes and, as a ultimate contact, had McConaughey punch PG&E within the jaw.