Film Review: Ambulance
Michael Bay’s no-chill Ambulance delivers exactly what’s advertised
Everyone is yelling, everything is exploding, and nothing makes any sense in Michael Bay’s breakneck heist actioner, Ambulance. And that’s exactly why it’s delightful. Detonating what should be a crackling thriller into a deranged, maximalist odyssey, Bay’s latest exercise in spectacle finds a stolen ambulance full of cash careening through Los Angeles. Blockbuster filmmaking where every decision is extra for no reason other than to pull some more exhilaration from your lungs, Ambulance hits with the force of a hundred exploding suns, eventually leaving you sated — and exhausted. Minor spoilers ahead…
Love him or hate him, it is indisputable that Michael Bay invokes certain feelings through instantly recognizable technique. Often imitated, never duplicated, Bay’s unique brew of overwhelming maximalism acts as the perfect delivery system for spectacle; as video essayist Patrick H. Willems labels him, he is a “true American auteur.” For years, his bombastic oeuvre was likened to the “death of cinema,” enduring a litany condemnations for his sledgehammer approach and sweeping excess, but now - the age of gigabudget franchises and the harried search for the next tentpole - is the perfect time to remind you that Bay has two films in the Criterion Collection, and that he is unmatched in marrying artistry with mass appeal. His latest shoot ‘em up actioner never pretends to grasp at the high watermarks of “Bayhem” that are The Rock and Armageddon, but as the mid-budget blockbuster lays dying, Ambulance feels like an exhilarating breath of fresh air.
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II plays Will, a struggling veteran drowning in the medical bills for his wife’s (Moses Ingram) experimental cancer treatment. Another Michael Bay iteration of the “soldiers good, government bad” perspective, Will reluctantly hooks up with his fast-talking, bank robber brother Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal as a gleeful maniac) for the motherlode of takedowns: a cool $32 million in a downtown Los Angeles bank. When things go gruesomely sideways, as they are wont to do in these types of situations, the brothers commandeer an ambulance that houses no-nonsense paramedic Cam (Eiza González) and an injured cop (Jackson White). From there, Ambulance embarks upon a ludicrous, white-knuckle destruction derby through the city, eventually drawing the attention of a bank robber task force led by Captain Monroe (Garrett Dillahunt), the FBI, and an assortment of unsavory gangland characters.
“…[Ambulance] rips into a [Tony] Scott-esque crackerjack concept, only to explode it into an unhinged, maximalist jaunt.”
In an adjacent, parallel universe, Ambulance would absolutely be helmed by a still-living Tony Scott, unsurprisingly a Michael Bay contemporary. An amalgam of Unstoppable, The Taking of Pelham 123, and Speed, the film rips into a Scott-esque crackerjack thriller concept, only to explode it into an unhinged, maximalist jaunt. With Ambulance, Bay substitutes the simmering suspense of a heist flick with adrenaline-jacking absurdity, utilizing every familiar trick in his utility belt to go big, big, big. Every single shot in Ambulance is designed for maximum impact, whether warranted or not: the 360-degree slow-motion dolly is back with a vengeance, Lorne Balfe’s melodramatic score drowns out even the most mundane dialogue, and Bay’s shoot-for-the-edit B-roll finds itself serving more cuts than a deli counter. At the center of it all? Drones. Not the methodical kind used for establishing shots, but the sweeping, diving, and swerving acrobatics designed to induce a crushing vertigo; most of the drone shots hilariously peter out to nothing at all, but it’s an undeniably thrilling use of modern technology to inject some brain-popping, visual dynamism.
Michael Bay has never excelled at airtight storytelling. Ambulance is rife with holes in logic you can spend all day and night poking at, but to do so would be missing the point entirely. I could spin some bullshit about Bay’s tenuous grasp of spatial geography and the incomprehensibility of the edit as a metaphor for the chaos of a high-speed pursuit, but that just wouldn’t be true. He just doesn’t care about those things. Instead, he cares about spectacle and the capture of said spectacle. He cares about how the story will lead to exploding spleens and open chest cavity surgery in a moving vehicle, he cares about dangerously low-flying helicopters skidding through the L.A. River, and he cares about an unhinged Jake Gyllenhaal mourning his ruined sweater.
“The question isn’t if you’ll be bored, but if your brain - and eyes - can keep up.”
Those who bristle against Bay’s most grating sensibilities as a “vulgar auteur” will also find reason to celebrate. Peeing robots and leering lenses don’t apply to Ambulance; with Chris Fedak’s thin - but sensitive - screenplay, Bay assembles his most compelling ensemble yet. Balancing a cracked-out Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II easily mines sympathy points even when the moral high-ground starts crumbling; but surprisingly, Eiza González’s Cam is the most deeply drawn woman in a Michael Bay film in years. Prickly and hyper-competent like a real hotshot paramedic would be, Cam acts as Ambulance’s beating heart, actually coming out of the ordeal with a fully-formed arc. It’s a ham-fisted journey that pulls at the most exposed of heartstrings, but it’s one that works on sheer power of performance alone.
Michael Bay is an artist, and his brush is fire and brimstone. A prolonged test of endurance to see just how much mayhem - or “Bayhem” - a lone, rogue vehicle can cause, Ambulance is perhaps the director’s most single-minded films in years, allowing him to riddle us with the perennial Michael Bay conundrum: Is it technical wizardry? Or is it gaudy excess? Why can’t it be both? Ambulance comes in at a 136-minute runtime, which is perhaps 40 minutes too long for its rollicking narrative, but the fat comes in the form of overflowing breakneck momentum: The action kicks in about 10 minutes in, and it’s full-throttle all the way until the end credits. The question isn’t if you’ll be bored, but if your brain - and eyes - can keep up.
