Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Michael Bay
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Eiza González, Garret Dillahunt, Jackson White, Keir O'Donnell
Having seen Ambulance, I'm now thoroughly convinced that the pandemic was engineered by
Michael Bay so he could shut down Los Angeles and flip every
replica cop car Hollywood has to offer. There isn't a hole in the City
of Angels he doesn't fly his little drone through. Where other
filmmakers have to try and convince us that Atlanta and Vancouver are
the Californian metropolis, Bay has been given the keys to Los
Angeles. While this lends his film an authenticity and a definite
sense of place, the LA setting serves to remind us of several past
action movies, which certainly doesn't do Bay any favours.
Based on a 2005 Danish thriller, Ambulance sees
military veteran Will (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) look up his
adoptive brother Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal) when he needs $231,000
to pay for his wife's experimental surgery. Will and Danny have been
estranged for several years due to the latter's following in their
late father's criminal footsteps. Rather than loan him the money,
Danny convinces his brother to join the crew he's assembled for a bank
heist in downtown LA. Desperate for the cash, Will agrees.
Following what resembles the famous shootout from Michael Maan's
Heat, if it were directed by a 10-year-old who just crushed seven cans of
Monster, Will and Danny hijack an ambulance, and along with the
vehicle, take cynical paramedic Cam (Eiza González) and gunshot
wounded rookie cop Zack (Jackson White) hostage as they seek a
way out of the city.
As an advert for the LAPD, Ambulance doesn't exactly
portray LA's finest in a great light. How hard can it be to stop an
ambulance? Don’t they have spikes in California? Are PIT maneuvers
forbidden in the Golden State? It takes a major degree of suspension
of disbelief to buy into our anti-heroes managing to evade the cops
for the movie's excessive 2.5 hour running time. Will and Danny never
do anything particularly clever yet they always seem to be two steps
ahead of the cops. This destroys any potential for tension or suspense
that may have been mined from the scenario.
But Bay doesn't allow the viewer time to ask such awkward questions.
He pummels us with his exhausting visual style, made all the more
incomprehensible now that he's discovered drone photography. There are
moments in the film where Bay seems so distracted by his drone that he
flies it off in a manner that has absolutely nothing to do with
covering the film's action. Some of the shot choices are truly
baffling, even by Bay's standards. His drone goes up tiddly up
up. Then goes down tiddly down down. Up, down, flying around, looping the loop and defying the ground. It looks like he and
everyone else working on the movie had the time of their lives. It's a
shame so little of this enthusiasm translates to the audience.
Along with his drones and explosives, Bay has gathered a quality cast
here, and Gyllenhaal and Abdul-Mateen II work overtime to try and make
something of their one-dimensional characters. It's Gonzalez who
quietly anchors the film as a paramedic just trying to do her job in
the most difficult of circumstances, in what is a surprisingly
touching tribute to frontline workers.
Ambulance is a mess. You can't hear half the dialogue.
The tone flips from broad comedy to dark violence in the space of a
single scene. Its action sequences pale in comparison to similar ones
pulled off with aplomb by the likes of James Cameron and Michael Mann.
And yet – and I can't believe I'm saying this about a Michael Bay movie
– I was never bored.
Perhaps it's a sign of how unspectacular Hollywood action movies have
become in this age of green screen over-reliance that even when one of
the world's most incompetent filmmakers gets to actually blow shit up in
the streets of a real city, it feels revolutionary. Say what you will
about Ambulance, the money's all up on the screen, even if you have to squint to see
it.
