Ambulance (2022)

Directed by: Michael Bay | 136 minutes | action, crime, thriller | Actors: Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Eiza González, Garret Dillahunt, Keir O’Donnell, Jackson White, Olivia Stambouliah, Moses Ingram, Colin Woodell, Cedric Sanders, A Martinez, Jesse Garcia, Jose Pablo Cantillo, Wale, Devan Chandler Long

He will probably never win a prestigious prize such as a DGA Award, but the large cinema audience usually knows how to like Michael Bay’s films. His first three films – ‘Bad Boys’ (1995), ‘The Rock’ (1996) and ‘Armageddon’ (1998) – collectively grossed well over a billion dollars, as did ‘Pearl Harbor’ (2001), ‘Bad Boys II’ (2003) and five Transformers films made the box office ring. Bay is the uncrowned king of big budget action movies filled with lavish chases, extravagant explosions and more overstylized and bombastic visual effects. Characters and plot are secondary to spectacle and special effects. It should crackle, it should pop and it should splash off the screen. So don’t expect ‘boys & girls next door’ in everyday situations, but fiercely attractive vamps & hunks who brave the greatest disasters. Michael Bay stands for escapism pur sang.

Bay is no longer as productive as in his early years, but every few years he returns with a blockbuster as we are used to from him. For ‘Ambulance’ (2022), Bay’s remake of the 2015 Danish film of the same name by Laurits Munch-Pedersen and Lars Andreas Pedersen, he managed to get at least two appealing protagonists with Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul Mateen II. The ‘babe’ on duty is Eiza Gonzalez, who we know from her role in Edgar Wright’s ‘Baby Driver’ (2017). We are first introduced to Will Sharpe (Yahya Abdul Mateen II), a former Marine who fought in Afghanistan and now has to fight against the bureaucracy and unfairness of the American health care system. His wife (Moses Ingram) is seriously ill and urgently needs surgery, but Will has to cough up $231,000 for that. Where on earth is he supposed to get such a fortune?

Then Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal), whose father Will once adopted as a little boy when he was left on his own. While Will managed to stay on the straight and narrow, Danny followed in the footsteps of their father, a notorious criminal who had dominated Los Angeles for decades. Although his wife urges him not to work with Danny, Will feels the pressure to raise the money for his wife’s surgery is too much of a burden. One small job, and then get out of that snake pit like the weeder again, that’s the plan. But Danny needs his brother for one of the biggest bank robberies ever in LA – today. A gang of tough guys — including a hippie at Birkenstocks and a muscle bundle called Mel Gibson — are already on the starting blocks. But while the robbery is in full swing, an inexperienced but lovesick policeman Zach (Jackson White) stands at the door and wants to ask one of the bank employees out. The slippery Danny has finished his story, but overplays his hand, after which things get completely out of hand. In a blind panic, Danny and Will take the now seriously injured officer as a hostage. The only way out of the encircled bank building is the ambulance that has come to pick up Zach and in which tough paramedic Cam Thompson (Eiza Gonzalez) must do her very best to save his life.

After an apocalyptic chaos around the bank building, with bullets and vehicles flying around you, a hysterical chase right through Los Angeles follows in the Michael Bay tradition. A battalion of police cars, armored cars and helicopters tries to stop the ambulance, but Will turns out to be a gifted driver who manages to avoid them one by one. Danny is the wrought-up of the two, who goes over corpses if necessary. Will has seen enough corpses in his time as a marine and wants to go home as soon as possible, to his wife and child. Preferably without killing anyone. Then not 16 grand.

You should not question credibility in Michael Bay films. The fact that the robbers enter the bank without a mask or other disguise is therefore not an issue here. Neither is the wafer-thin story. We’d love to know more about how Will was adopted by the Sharp family, but we’re not getting an answer. The character of Gyllenhaal is little explored; Danny doesn’t become much more than a self-confessed career criminal with increasingly maniacal streaks. Even though he is played by Gyllenhaal, we as viewers don’t really care how he fares. How different it is with Will, who manages to win our sympathy. Of course Bay and screenwriter Chris Fedak pull out all the stops to like Will, he is destined to become the hero of the film. Subtle is different, but thanks to the fine performance of Yahya Abdul Mateen and also Gonzalez, the film gets away with it. Other roles, such as Garret Dillahunt as an eccentric LAPD chief who likes to drive around with his giant dog in a tiny car, and Keir O’Donnell as an FBI agent who we have yet to know is gay and who happened to have studied with Danny, are barely visible.

All attention is focused on the adrenaline rush of the chase, Zach fighting for his life, the crashes, the explosions and the gangster friends who are called in to find a way out of the situation Danny and Will find themselves in. Because of the way of filming – Bay is close to his characters and the film has been edited in a hurry, you get the feeling that you are right in the middle of the action. That ensures that, despite all those shortcomings in story and character development, you still go along with the hectic pace of ‘Ambulance’. But the playing time of 136 minutes has a disadvantage (for comparison, the Danish version was an hour (!) shorter). Had the film been edited a lot more efficiently – if only about 45 minutes had been cut out – then that would certainly have improved the entertainment of ‘Ambulance’!