Released: 25th March 2022 (UK)
Length: 136 Minutes
Certificate: 15
Director: Michael Bay
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Eiza González, Jackson White, Keir O'Donnell and Garret Dillahunt
Michael Bay may be a reliable director for generating profits, but his films have long been lambasted by the masses. His style of bloated action isn’t going anywhere with Ambulance, another limp effort that will exhaust rather than entertain.
In modern Los Angeles, ex-soldier Will Sharp (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) needs money to pay for his family’s medical bills. He turns to his unstable brother Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal) who plots a risky bank heist in the city centre. Following a shootout, the duo hijacks an ambulance to escape and a two-hour long chase begins. This is complicated by a wounded police officer (Jackson White) and a paramedic named Cam (Eiza González) trying to save him in the back. Ambulance aims for a combination of Speed and Michael Mann’s Heat; the result is less than ideal. At over two hours long, the film drags out the race against the law, introducing new characters and piling on twists at the most inopportune moments. Instead of being exhilarating, the film becomes a draining assault on the senses. The film’s only effective scene is a stomach-churning operation with Cam opening up her patient while taking advice from doctors over video chat. It’s appropriately visceral and tense, something the rest of the film fails to achieve.
The lead characters are passable, but the film needed to do more to get you invested. Will is the good-natured protagonist caught up in a violent situation; he is able to maintain his caring attitude. On the other hand, Jake Gyllenhaal is unhinged and sociopathic; much like his performance in Nightcrawler, it’s an effective persona. Cam is ferociously dedicated to her work in saving lives and much like Will, she is likeable all the way through. Ambulance keeps character development to a minimum once the action starts, confining it to quick conversations as the vehicle races around the city. The side characters have two purposes; to be killed off in the early going or to show off a cheap quirk. These gimmicks aren’t as obnoxious as the Transformers movies, but that’s a low bar to clear. Why does the police chief drive around with his oversized dog? Why does the FBI negotiator have a flimsy connection to Danny? This pointless fluff means nothing to the story and disrupts the pacing even more.
The style of editing and presentation doesn’t impress either. Yet again, the cinematography is a random mess that bounces all over the place when the action starts. In every one of his films, Bay seems to tout a new shooting technique; this time it’s a set of drone shots that pan up and around the LA skyscrapers. The unique style is quickly undercut by a metric ton of shaky cam and extreme close-ups. The opening shootout and a hand-to-hand fight inside the ambulance are particularly bad as the camera refuses to focus for more than a few seconds. There’s no sense of flow or pacing to these sequences; you’ll have trouble following them for the most part. The soundtrack by Lorne Balfe is pulse-pounding and punchy, but odds are you’ll be too drained from the incomprehensible camerawork to notice the impact.
Like so many of his previous films, Michael Bay’s Ambulance is a tiring and nauseating experience. Outside of passable main characters and a grisly bit of surgery, the film is overly-long and messy. The director’s poor approach to narrative and editing constantly gets in the way, making it another atrocious production.
Rating: 1.5/5 Stars (Bad)
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