‘Ambulance’ Is A Welcome Return To Pre-Transformers Theatrical Bayhem

There’s no denying that, even with a measly $40 million budget, Michael Bay knows how to put on a show. Ambulance, the director’s newest explosive outing, is a larger than life project centered around an ironically small emergency vehicle. Ambulance isn’t a flawless film, and its at its weakest outside the core action. That said, it’s a successful action film with sufficiently strong central performances and fun, heart-pumping action sequences. If what you want is a spike of adrenaline, you’ve got it, and it’s a welcome return to full-tilt, theatrical, pre-Transformers Bayhem.

In Ambulance, Will Sharp (a complex performance by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) is a veteran in need of money with few options to help his family, when he turns to his once-close, now-estranged brother Danny (an electric and energetic Jake Gyllenhaal) for financial help. The troubling thing is that Danny, like their father, is a career criminal about to score a big heist. Things go awry, and the pair commandeer an ambulance with cynical EMT Cam (Eiza Gonzalez) and an injured cop as hostages. They have to find a way out when all of the cops in Los Angeles turn their eyes upon the thieves.

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s Will is the film’s emotional grounding, and he gives a strong performance that lands the difficulty of making a relatable character do ethically questionable things. Jake Gyllenhaal’s portrayal of the charismatic, intense Danny adds a nicely chaotic energy to every scene, and Garret Dillahunt and Kier O’Donnell give excellent performances as Captain Monroe and Agent Anson Clark, respectively, providing strong and screenworthy opposition to our plucky band of criminals.

From the get-go we’re introduced to the hallmarks of traditional Michael Bay cinematography. Camera whips, loads of movement, knee-height cameras pointed up at their subjects, and ever-rotating camera tricks begin at moment one, well before the excitement starts. It does add dynamism and energy from the film’s beginning, but they do make some simple scenes in the beginning needlessly confusing. Once the central characters load into the ambulance and go on the rhetorical run, Bay’s tricks work. It’s a high octane, mile-a-minute tour through LA city streets that, in the core of the film, is entertaining.

There are certainly plot contrivances and turns that make relatively little sense. For example, one key criminal tactic, which I won’t spoil, is a smart and successful plan that’s needlessly complicated by the addition of some overkill factors… it results in severe consequences for a character on that side of the conflict, and it doesn’t make any sense when that side was so difficult to bring into the fold anyway. That said, the crux of the film is a consistently fun, outlandish, larger than life spectacle with a siren on top. A lot of what it’s trying to do sticks the landing, and if that’s your speed you’ll dig it.

The weakest parts of the film are its beginning and end. As noted before, the Bay-characteristic tricks don’t work nearly as well when the human characters are shot like so many car chases. Additionally, some of the dialogue in these moments are clunky, heavy-handed, or nonsensical. For example, there’s resolution in the third act for a plotline for Eiza Gonzalez’ character (it’s resolution that really didn’t need to happen given her character already visibly grew in said area) that’s accompanied by the most emotionally overwrought dialogue in the film. Bay here is clearly at his best when the action’s turned up to 11. It’s also feels about 20-25 minutes too long, and would be served a little better by having a tighter narrative, less repetition in the middle, and a streamlined pace.

That said, it’s a well-updated throwback to the Bayhem of yore but with a polished contemporary veneer. The action sequences are engaging, the character development by-and-large lands, and its attempts to thematically fit with the times are pretty smartly developed, if occasionally clunky. For what it’s going for, that is a lightning-paced ode to mid-city car chases, explosions, and bullets in all directions, Ambulance genuinely does not disappoint.

Ambulance hits theaters April 8th.