The Last Bus: Movie Review

Cast: Timothy Spall
Director: Gillies MacKinnon

Gillies MacKinnon's The Last Bus concerns itself with an elderly gentleman Tom who decides one day to travel from John O'Groats at the top of Scotland to Land's End in England's South West, clutching only a suitcase and his bus pass after his wife dies.

As he travels across the land, Tom deals with issues from the past, as he heads to his ultimate destination.

The Last Bus is a gentle film, one that radiates kindness and cliche, but doesn't have a wealth of narrative drive to get it through its 85 minute run time. 

As a result, much of what occurs in The Last Bus feels episodic and almost piecemeal, with hardly any real characters emerging and mainly caricatures chipping in from the sidelines. Along with flashbacks, the film's genial atmosphere seems to zero in on more on the audience empathy for an elderly figure, in a film that's made in a country that made a hero out of the elderly Captain Tom Moore.

With Timothy Spall's jowly almost ratty saggy face, torn with age and memory proving a contrast to the rolling hills and idylls of the locations visited during this journey, The Last Bus is a film that centres itself solely on how a good man can impact others around him, no matter what their beliefs and attitudes may be.

From being the only one to confront a racist on a crowded bus to a timely intervention from a group of Ukrainians when Tom is abandoned atop a hill, the film exists mostly to provide a halo glow around its protagonist and it's only with the work done by Spall, who exudes humanity and pathos, that the film succeeds in getting to its destination after such a piecemeal, patchwork journey.