Back in 2006, director Paul Greengrass unveiled the docudrama United 93, about the harrowing events of 9/11, and many of us wondered ... too soon?
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| With traffic backed up for 15 miles (!) on the primary escape road to Chico, school bus driver Kevin McKay (Matthew McConaughey) and grade school teacher Mary Ludwig (American Ferrera) seek an alternate route to get themselves and 22 children to safety. |
Now, not quite seven years after the calamitous firestorm that leveled Paradise, Ca., Greengrass has responded with this docudrama ... and, again, is it too soon?
Absolutely not, thanks in part to a timely “message line” delivered by Fire Chief Martinez (Yul Vazquez), toward the end of the film: “Every year, the fires gets bigger. And there’s more of them. We’re being damn fools. That’s the truth.”
(Probably more of a 2025 sentiment than one from 2018, but still persuasive.)
That’s merely an incidental moment in a mesmerizing drama that begins at 4 p.m. on November 7, 2018, as recently hired Pine Ridge School Unified Transportation District bus driver Kevin McKay (Matthew McConaughey) drops his busload of children at their various stops, following a day at school.
Kevin’s life has gone completely to hell. He has returned to Paradise, following his father’s death from cancer, and taken the bus-driving job in order to deal with the lingering medical debt. He has moved his mother, suffering from stage 4 melanoma, into his home; his teenage son Shaun (Levi McConaughey, the star’s actual son) also lives with them. And — icing on the cake — Kevin’s beloved dog just had to be put down, also due to cancer.
(That may seem like Greengrass and co-scripter Brad Ingelsby are exaggerating this poor guy’s misery, but in fact those details are accurate.)
McConaughey, always at his best playing the sort of blue-collar, working-class bloke who makes this country run, delivers a shattering performance in these early scenes. His features are grim, resigned, frustrated and even frightened, his eyes haunted. Trying to juggle all these responsibilities has made him unreliable at work, to the dismay of his boss, Ruby (Ashlie Atkinson, in an excellent supporting role).
These scenes are intercut with frequent news announcements — 210 days with no rain, rapidly accelerating wind gusts — and unsettling images of PG&E cell towers and cables swaying back and forth.
Greengrass shifts to 6:15 a.m. the following morning. Gusts now are 80 miles per hour, as Kevin boards his bus, collects his young passengers, and drops them off at school.
Elsewhere, wind damages an electrical tower, generating sparks that ignite the brush below. A passing motorist reports the resulting blaze; the firefighters at Jarbo Gap-Cal Fire Station 36, eight miles east of town, are mobilized. Chief Martinez sets up an action station nearby.
Such attention to detail is one of this film’s many strengths, and quite harrowing in its own right ... because we know that man will lose the subsequent race against time, and nature’s fury, in increasingly terrifying increments.
Kevin, meanwhile, is up to his ears in conflicting responsibilities: due back at base, clearly nervous about the rapidly approaching smoke plume, worried about his son and mother.
At the action station, Martinez orders an evacuation of Paradise — initially partial, then total — after the fire swallows the nearby community of Concow, to the northeast.
At Ponderosa Elementary School, 22 remaining children have parents who work elsewhere, and are unable to reach them. The school principal makes a frantic call to the Unified Transportation District, begging for a bus to collect them; Ruby radios her team. Kevin, improperly running a personal errand in his bus, listens as various drivers are unable to help.
This is McConaughey’s strongest moment, because Kevin is torn ... but, finally, he agrees to collect the kids. Upon arrival, he insists they be accompanied by their teacher, Mary Ludwig (American Ferrera), believing — correctly — that she’ll be a calming influence.
They then set off for the emergency drop-off point ... little realizing, because coms and cell towers have just gone down, that the rapidly escalating crisis has rendered that part of town unsafe.
The initial scenes between McConaughey and Ferrera are badly scripted and poorly handled, feeling more like “movie cliché” than real life. Mary bristles when Kevin politely calls her “ma’am”; she also maintains a “stick to the plan” stubbornness long past the point a reasonable person would recognize that improvisation has become essential.
Fortunately, once past the awkwardness of their initial scenes, both actors settle into credible teamwork.
And goodness, Greengrass and Ingelsby put them — and the children — through sheer hell.
Vazquez is solid as the chief; Kate Wharton also shines as Cal Fire battalion chief Jen Kissoon.
Several of the kids are great little performers, notably Nathan Gariety (as Toby), Olivia Darling Busby (Ava) and Autumn Molina (Chloe).
Greengrass and Ingelsby aren’t shy about lambasting the three PG&E officials who appear briefly in a pair of scenes, and are portrayed as feckless, incompetent idiots.
Their script is based on Lizzie Johnson’s 2021 memoir, Paradise: One Town’s Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire. Much of what occurs during the film’s second half is accurate; the rest is quite exaggerated (and I can’t clarify, without killing some suspense).
But it’s safe to point out that the behavior of Kevin’s bitchy ex-wife, Linda (Kimberli Flores) — via an ongoing stream of phone calls — is fabricated, and frankly unnecessary.
The accelerating conflagration itself is a chilling blend of actual forest fire footage and studio-generated fire effects, seamlessly blended by editors Peter Dudgeon, William Goldenberg and Paul Rubell, to convey — to a shocking degree — the scale of destruction.
One sidebar sequence in Concow, as a lone dedicated firefighter dubbed “Utility 2136” struggles to save a couple dozen people, is deeply disturbing ... particularly with its terrifying depiction of a “burn-over.”
Even acknowledging the Hollywood touches, Greengrass’ suspenseful drama is grim and compelling. It’s also a timely reminder that we need to become more respectful of our unchecked impact on this planet we call home.
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