Ambulance – Movie Review
136 Minutes, Rated R
Written by Chris Fedak
Directed by Michael Bay
**NOTE: this review is a double-feature with our Sonic the Hedgehog 2 review so if yo uwant to jump right to Ambulance, jump ahead to around the 8:15 mark.**
Synopsis:
Over one day across the streets of L.A., three lives will change forever.
In this breakneck thriller from director-producer Michael Bay, decorated veteran Will Sharp, desperate for money to cover his wife’s medical bills, asks for help from the one person he knows he shouldn’t—his adoptive brother Danny. A charismatic career criminal, Danny instead offers him a score: the biggest bank heist in Los Angeles history: $32 million. With his wife’s survival on the line, Will can’t say no.
But when their getaway goes spectacularly wrong, the desperate brothers hijack an ambulance with a wounded cop clinging to life and ace EMT Cam Thompson onboard. In a high-speed pursuit that never stops, Will and Danny must evade a massive, city-wide law enforcement response, keep their hostages alive, and somehow try not to kill each other, all while executing the most insane escape L.A. has ever seen.
Michael Bay certainly makes big movies. Big. Loud. Always in motion. Even when they don’t have to movie.
And now he has drones, which makes for some really interesting camera work…
But then he pairs it with hard-cuts to shaky cam, which is really discombobulating.
Oh; the story. Right. Yeah… the story…
Well, there’s a bank robbery, and a cop gets shot, and a super-awesome EMT saves him, only to have the titular Ambulance get hijacked by the bank robbers as a get-away vehicle.
And then there’s a chase.
Yeah… That’s the story.
It’s very, very Michael Bay.
It almost makes Transformers look reasonable.
Almost.
Okay, there’s more than that. I mean, we’re supposed to be rooting for somebody, and we are: Cam, the EMT, played by Eiza Gonzalez. Writer Chris Fedak tries to make us care about Will, the younger of the two brother/robbers (Abdul-Mateen II), but even he is so flawed as to make that very, very difficult, if not impossible
Jake Gyllenhaal’s performance as Danny is very up there, if you know what I’m saying. He’s channeling every bit of his time from Spider-Man: Far From Home and Nightcrawler (after a fashion), which works for this particular character in this particular film, but we still don’t care very much about him.
In the end, Ambulance is all about drone-footage of car crashes and explosions… which we get in spades.
Ambulance hits theaters on April 8 and stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Eiza González, Garrett Dillahunt, and Keir O’Donnell.
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