The Last Bus (2021)

This is a slow-paced movie where not much exciting happens. You can see that just by reading the reviews: the negative ones that use words like boring, and nothing happens! This is perhaps why there is such an audience out there for end to end action movies. A lot of viewers want movies with simple plots, where every problem is caused and solved by acts of violence. Those movies are easier to watch if you have talkative friends over for movie night, or want to constantly text while viewing and — sorry, I seem to have fallen into rant mode.

Timothy Spall does his usual sublime work, and it is easy to forget the actor is 30 years younger than this role. The rest of the cast are not too shabby either. The dialogue rings true most of the time. I am not sure it pieces together the social media connection as well as it could have, but that is quite minor. This is a great character study of a normal guy, with backstory about his marriage added in through gradual flashbacks.

One of my favorite elements of this film is the way they keep Spall’s elderly character consistent. He is a bit of a curmudgeon right from the start of his journey, at least until the people he encounters get beneath his outer shell, and he is the same way at the end. It would have been easy to have him be Mr. Sunshine at the end, affected by the kindness and approval he encountered along the way, but his character stayed true to himself. It is a movie of neat small touches; too quiet for many, just right for others, like me.

Having recently lost his wife to cancer, "Tom" (Timothy Spall) decides to meticulously follow a route they took many years earlier from John O'Groats in Caithness all the way down the island of Great Britain to his hometown near Land's End in Cornwall - some 800-odd miles away. Armed only with a thick coat and a tiny suitcase, he determines to use his bus pass and along the way meets a wide variety of caring - and not so caring - individuals who engage with him, invite him into their lives, or just throw him off the bus for not having a ticket! As his journey continues he starts to attract the attention of local media but he's pretty ambivalent to any of that - he has just become a man with a mission. Along the way we are treated to some flashbacks of their early life - Ben Ewing and Natalie Mitson providing the acting - as we learn of their early lives, love and, of course, of their traumas and tribulations along the way. The story takes it's time and though never exactly dull, it's not especially lively either. Some of the events on his bus trip come across as a little overly contrived and Spall has precious little by way of dialogue to enliven this often rather plodding drama. At times, though, it presents a poignant opportunity for a man to reflect on a lifetime spent with the woman he loved and I'm sure will resonate widely with people dealing with loss and grief.