Film Review: Ambulance

Director: Michael Bay
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II,  Eiza González
Running time: 136 minutes

Michael Bay is back with another slice of complete Bayhem. Love him or hate him, the man has been a towering figure in modern day action blockbusters with films like Bad Boys II and Transformers. This time he is working on a smaller budget (a measly $40M) to create a more claustrophobic and character-driven story. 

Ambulance follows Will Sharp (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), a veteran struggling to pay his wife's medical bills due to an experimental surgery that is not covered on their insurance - probably a tale that is not too strange in modern day America. Of course, when he turns to his far more unhinged, bank-robbing adoptive brother Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal), he is soon involved with a plot to pull off a heist. None of this, however, is going to work out, and before long the two of them are driving an ambulance with two hostages, a wounded cop and an EMT (Eiza González), trying to escape the police.

One of the most obvious influences on this film, even from just the trailer, is Michael Mann’s masterpiece, Heat. Not only is it a heist film with a lengthy bank shootout sequence, where even the visceral style of action seems inspired by Mann, but the film is shot on location in LA as well. Even down to the way it attempts to empathise with the criminals (something out of character for Bay) and break down the black and white notion of cops and crooks feels reminiscent of the 1995 film.

There is a sense of drama between the characters here, be it failed family relationships or lingering death; however, it doesn’t feel tapped into enough. Of course, Bay is not Mann, and this film isn’t particularly interested in mythos or character dramas but more the absolute carnage that comes from a city-wide car chase.

Action is plentiful in this 136 minute film, and once it gets going it very rarely slows down. Danny constantly repeats phrases such as “we don’t stop” or “we’re locomotives”, and in many ways that reflects the film's absolute lightning fast pacing. There is never a dull moment, with things almost feeling like they are in a constant state of tension-building, only to release it momentarily before it ramping up again when something new goes wrong. Helping this is the extremely high amount of crashes and explosions that seem to virtually never stop - which isn’t really an issue due to just how satisfying they are to watch. There is something incredibly intoxicating about such insane destruction happening at such a rhythmic pace.

If there is one thing that Bay is infamous for, it is his style of editing. Employing a frantic and rapidly-moving sequence of quick cuts can effectively ramp up the tension but also cause confusion and, at its worst, nausea. Despite the film occasionally dissolving into incoherence it often looks very good. Bay crafts some great montages of a sun-soaked LA that break up the tension and really do look beautiful. It also wouldn’t be a Bay film without a copious amount of lens flare and camera shots that either swoop down from the skies and align with the car chases or give intense close ups to get a gritter realistic tone to the film. The extensive use of drone shots can become quite disorienting at times, which potentially just adds to the insanity happening on screen.

It isn’t surprising that the writing is fairly shallow, although it is a bit more nuanced than expected from a typical Bay film. Ambulance isn’t saying anything particularly new about the dichotomy between cops and criminals, and it certainly overplays the sentimental card at times, when it really doesn’t have to. As Tom Sizemore says in Heat, “The action is the juice,” and nobody believes this statement more than Bay himself. Despite the writing, the performances are solid. Gyllenhaal is dialled up to 11 in this film and plays a neurotic criminal excellently. González and Abdul-Mateen II are both superb in playing calmer, more subtle roles that both act as an anchor to stop the movie from really flying off into pure, unfettered Bayhem. 

Anyone looking for a solid, tense and well-paced action film that delivers on both a large amount of vehicular destruction and sweaty men getting progressively more aggressive towards one another will be happy with this. Throughout the film, things do successfully remain quite tense and the twists that alter the course of the story are interesting and do not feel contrived. Ambulance isn’t going to blow anyone away, but as an entertaining popcorn flick, it does more than a good job. 

Did you know? This is the third film, Gyllenhaal has starred in, that is a remake of a Danish film. The other two being The Guilty (2021) and Brothers (2009).

Ambulance is now available in cinemas