Call an Ambulance, because I’m sick with satisfaction!
Something happened at the end of Ambulance that I didn’t expect when the movie began. I cared. I cared for the characters. I haven’t cared for characters in a Michael Bay film for nearly ten years, back when Pain & Gain came out, and even that barely registered as honest emotion. I’m not going to defend Ambulance as a great film, nor a really good one. It stumbles in many of the same ways we’ve come to expect from Michael Bay’s projects, that is, in terms of story and confusing camerawork. However, as a piece of high concept escapism, Ambulance is a spectacular time at the movies.
Ambulance is based on the 2005 Danish film, Ambulancen, directed by Laurits Munch-Petersen, about two brothers who hijack an ambulance as a getaway car after a bank robbery attempt to get money for their sick mother’s surgery goes wrong. In the ambulance is an injured man and an EMT trying to keep him alive. Michael Bay’s Ambulance isn’t much different. It trades a sick mother for a sick wife, an injured stranger for an injured cop, and a slim 75 minutes for a way too long 136 minutes (yes, nearly twice as long). If Ambulance cut out the first unnecessary twenty minutes and the sappy final ten, it’d be a slick action flick. Props to the Danish film for establishing characters amidst the action, not as Bay does in a slow buildup to the action.
Speaking of characters, we have the two brothers, Jake Gyllenhaal as Danny Sharp and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Will Sharp. Eiza González plays Cam Thompson, the kidnapped EMT in the ambulance, and Jackson White is the injured cop fighting for his life throughout the film. Chasing them throughout Los Angeles are basically the entire LAPD and FBI force led by Captain Monroe (Garret Dillahunt) and FBI Agent Anson Clark (Keir O’Donnell). There are a handful of auxiliary characters populating minor and major plot threads that contribute to the extended run time, and most are unnecessary, while a few are solid comic relief. The deep bench of supporting players chasing the fast-flowing action and delivering witty banter is reminiscent of classic ’90s action flicks. Whether you consider that a good or bad thing, your mileage may vary.
Let’s touch on the camerawork. The opening heist contains, by my count, six shots that start above a building’s roof before spiralling down along the side of the building to a character with a gun. The action sequence is confusing with little spatial awareness. Amidst the chaos, there’s multiple (that’s MORE than one) direct references to Bay’s own films. As much as I dislike the idea of filmmakers referencing their own previous work, this time it sort of works. It’s a sign that the movie isn’t going to take itself too seriously. One man who’s absolutely on board with all of it is Jake Gyllenhaal. He’s obviously having a great time, giving 110% to a role that in another risk-averse actor’s hands would’ve been played boringly straight. His zaniness plays well off of Abdul-Mateen’s emotional stoicism. Their chemistry carries the film through its slower moments.
Bay has been floundering through a junky Transformers series for over a decade. It’s nice to see him return to an old school stunt-filled action film. The explosions are visceral, the urgency feels real, and (most of) the characters are multi-dimensional. I can forgive some flat dialogue and messy editing when it’s not the main takeaway from the filmgoing experience, which is what the recent Michael Bay experience felt like. From beginning to end, Ambulance is true blue popcorn entertainment. Unexpectedly, the movie’s end credits last only one minute, if even that. I’m unsure why that choice was made, but I appreciated the brevity. Why wasn’t that same choice applied to the film itself?
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Ambulance opens today in Bay Area theaters.
