Ambulance, 2022.
Directed by Michael Bay.
Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Eiza González, Garret Dillahunt, Keir O’Donnell, Moses Ingram, A Martinez, Wale Folarin, Cedric Sanders, Jackson White, Colin Woodell, Olivia Stambouliah, Jesse Garcia, Victor Gojcaj, Remi Adeleke, and Devan Long.
SYNOPSIS:
Decorated veteran Will Sharp, desperate for money to cover his wife’s medical bills, asks for help from his adoptive brother Danny. A charismatic career criminal, Danny instead offers him a score: the biggest bank heist in Los Angeles history: $32 million.
At one point, one of the many superfluous characters with nothing to do in Ambulance mentions with a degree of self-awareness that an expensive car chase is unfolding. That chase involves the titular ambulance and droves of police cruisers, often smashed into and knocked around like action figures colliding with one another, something that the rapid editing and dizzying drone cinematography cause to resemble further. No one expects anything less from director Michael Bay, but the pratfalls of this one sting a little more because there is a solid, gripping 70-minutes within these 134 minutes of excess Bayhem. That’s also something that can’t be said for most Michael Bay movies.
It’s not that the excess is inherently bad. But here, it is usually at odds with what Michael Bay (alongside screenwriter Chris Fedak, adapting the original international version from Oscar-winning Danish director Laurits Munch-Petersen and Lars Andreas Pedersen) is trying to achieve. Somehow, an extra hour has been added to this story, and while I admit to having never seen the template for this interpretation, it doesn’t seem to be for any game-changing reason. Dumb fun is always acceptable and will always be welcome, especially from Michael Bay, but Ambulance dances between knowingly ridiculous and eye-winkingly endearing stupid to laughable attempts at eliciting empathy for these characters and, at worst, going for a corny emotional crescendo.
When Michael Bay is taking advantage of the actual ambulance setting for creatively ludicrous set pieces such as an EMT (a game Eiza González that deserves some award for lending this nonsense some heart and almost making her character’s emotional arc land) performing surgery on a bleeding out officer, with the high-speed chase slowing down (the ambulance hijackers have the wounded gunshot officer as a hostage for leverage in their bank robbery escape), there is a rush of exhilaration and urgency. Doubly so, considering the reliably intense and unhinged Jake Gyllenhaal certainly knows how to wield psychopathic dialogue and behavior in a manner complementary to Michael Bay’s cacophony of destruction. Nearly everything inside the actual ambulance is a hoot and spectacular to behold, even if it is dumb as rocks.
Michael Bay’s trademark goofy humor is also here, whether from characters shoveling down Cheetos while tracking the robbers inside the ambulance or a police captain pulling one of the vehicles out because his dog stowed away in the backseat and is in danger. Plot reveals such as an FBI agent connected to Jake Gyllenhaal’s filthy prosperous career criminal Danny Sharp or why EMT Cam Thompson’s medical career got derailed are revealed with a straight-faced seriousness but not dwelled on, hinting that, yes, Michael Bay knows this is all dumb. Not every joke lands and some of them will induce a cringe, but there are also moments where Michael Bay uses intentionally dumb humor to push the action forward in an imaginative way.
Then there is everything surrounding that high-octane chase, which starts reasonably acceptable with an introduction to down on his luck military veteran Will Sharp (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), who is feeling abandoned by his country financially and desperately in need of cash for medical concerns related to his wife Amy (Moses Ingram). As fast as Will reassures his wife that he has his most wanted brother blocked in his contact list, he turns around and shows up looking for some money. Danny doesn’t do handouts and also doesn’t trust his current team for an upcoming mission (one of them earns the nickname Mel Gibson for bearing a younger resemblance, to give you an idea of the comedy on display here) and decides to rope his brother in for part of the score.
The objective is to steal from one of the largest and most guarded banks in LA, which somewhat comes along swimmingly until a nearby police officer stops by to chat with a bank teller he is crushing on. From there, all hell breaks loose, and I don’t just mean inside the bank but more so in terms of cinematography and spatial awareness. There must be 47 cuts a minute in Ambulance, which is disorienting (shifting between parking garages, city streets, responding police officers and ambulances, and inside the bank itself) until inevitably finding its way to trap the thieves and first responders in one location where the film speeds up and doesn’t let up on the pedal for a good hour.
While proclaiming the ambulance will stop for no one, Danny becomes crazier by the second as his brother Will tries to adhere to some moral code in the driver’s seat. However, one of the most amusing aspects is watching Danny justify his actions, as he genuinely believes they are the good guys in this story. Unfortunately, that too becomes exhausting, especially since Michael Bay eventually tries building dramatic stakes that don’t work when neither of these characters deserves a shred of empathy. It also doesn’t help that Ambulance transitions into shootouts galore once the vehicle has more or less taken a backseat in the grand scheme of this self-indulgent spectacle.
But someone does get smacked in the face with a defibrillator; that counts for something. Ambulance is a frenetic concoction of Michael Bay’s strengths and worst impulses. Although certain stretches do provide preposterous thrills, reconfirming Michael Bay as, for better or worse, one of the action genre’s most distinguishable voices.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com
