THE LAST BUS

The artistic choices by cast and crew make the movie much more a dour affair than an uplifting one.

I really wanted to like The Last Bus, the unlikely tale of an old-age pensioner who takes a series of buses to go on an 800-mile trip from John o' Groats to Land's End. Yet despite enough elements that could have made the movie into a British version of The Straight Story, the artistic choices by cast and crew make the movie much more a dour affair than an uplifting one.

The main problem lies in the central performance of Timothy Spall, an actor I usually like a lot. Here he is irritatingly non-emotive though, as he asks the viewer to look beyond his stern exterior yet gives away nothing about what's brewing inside.

He isn't helped in that regard by a screenplay that prefers stagnation over progress and implausible incidents over dramatic propulsion. Combined with Gillies MacKinnon's cold, distant direction and editing that fails to find focus this makes The Last Bus into a curiously unengaging film that fails to elicit genuine emotion from a fine premise.

release: 2021

director: Gillies MacKinnon

starring: Timothy Spall, Phyllis Logan, Natalie Mitson, Ben Ewing