Some plots will always be reliable in Hollywood. No studio ever went bankrupt on a movie about an innocent person wrongly accused, two people who resist their love for each other, or the lone voice of reason desperate to convince others about the truth before it is too late. Ambulance, the new thriller from Michael Bay, continues in that tradition because it is a chase film with hostages. The dramatic, action-packed situations practically write themselves, right? Bay and his screenwriter Chris Fedak loosely adapt a Danish film of the same name, which was more of a shaggy dog comedy, and imbue their American remake with everything we can expect from the guy behind The Rock, Armageddon and Transformers: maximalist entertainment that fetishizes action ephemera, punctuated by frenzied cutting and explosions. By leaning into his sensibilities while referencing other seminal Los Angeles-based action films, Bay has made his most ferociously satisfying film in years.
The opening images dwell on a flashback between two boys, one white and the other black, since their bond helps the story glide past some implausible moments. They are Danny and Will, played as adults by Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, who refer to each other as “brother” after Danny’s father took Will into his home. One morning Will visits Danny and asks him for money because he is desperate to pay for his wife’s experimental surgery. Danny is the fast-talking type who senses weakness, and instead of giving him a loan, he makes Will an irresistible offer: participate in a bank robbery, and he will have millions for one day’s work. The robbery does not go as planned – most of Danny’s team is killed in a chaotic gun battle – so he and Will escape in ambulance. They do not count on Cam (Eiza González), an EMT who is treating an injured police officer in the back of the ambulance, and so the film becomes an extended pursuit and struggle to save the police officer’s life.
It is remarkable the budget for Ambulance is only $40 million since the special effects and production values are always convincing. Perhaps Bay cut corners by shooting around Los Angeles, and relying on drone footage instead of traditional cameras. In its uniquely coked-up way, drone footage by cinematographer Roberto De Angelis is remarkable: the images are crisp and fast, spinning and contorting around skyscrapers, helicopters, and the ambulance at ferocious speed. This is Bay’s way of laying the groundwork for his action sequences, since the drones give the lay of the land enough that the viewer understands the ambulance in relation to their pursuers. For a filmmaker known for “chaos cinema,” Ambulance can be surprisingly easy to follow, provided to accept Bay’s penchant for extreme close-ups and snappy editing.
The ambulance chase gives Bay and Fedak time to flesh out Danny, Will, and many supporting characters. Monroe (Garret Dillahunt) and Clark (Keir O’Donnell) are two hostage negotiators who give background about the characters and their tactics, in ways that are both crucial and superfluous. In his desperation, Danny enlists a gangster named Papi (A Martinez) for help, which leads to a wildly violent sequence that turns the EMT’s life-saving efforts into a grim joke. As for what happens in the ambulance, there are the usual arguments between kidnappers and hostages, with the added tension of Danny and Will’s complicated relationship. What you might not expect, however, is an extended surgery sequence where Cam reaches into the officer’s abdomen to retrieve a bullet. She is not a surgeon, so she video conferences with her doctor ex-boyfriend and two trauma surgeons for help. Bloody and gruesome, the surgery scene would be considered extreme in a horror movie, which I suppose is Bay’s way of paying tribute to a profession that does not get the respect it deserves.
If you are a fan of action cinema, maybe you recall that an amateur performing surgery is an important scene in Ronin, an action film also full of intense chases. That is deliberate. Over the course of Ambulance, Bay’s references to the action canon become more frequent and agreeable. Some of the callbacks are obvious, like when two minor character joke about dialogue in The Rock. Others are more oblique, like how Danny and Will use a trick from To Live and Die in LA to get out of a tough spot. Part of the fun is seeing how Bay remixes his influences, and two ultimately stand out more than others. The “money shot” of the film involves Jake Gyllenhaal dangling out of the ambulance window, firing a rifle at helicopters behind him, a reference to the action from Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The other significant influence is Michael Mann’s Heat, which is referenced in the bank robbery and throughout the film, right up to the last shot.
Mann called Heat an “LA crime saga,” and Ambulance continues in that tradition. Bay includes many, many shots of the Los Angeles skyline, and the chase takes him through several recognizable locations. Both films share a sense of ambition, and while Mann found emotional resonance among his cops and robbers, Bay opts for an overlong conclusion that resolves every subplot –in ways that saccharine and melodramatic. That sentimentality is the biggest weakness in Ambulance, an incongruous decision since Gyllenhaal and Abdul-Mateen’s convincing performances mostly opt for Bay’s preferred modes of anger and sadistic irony. It is ultimately easy to forgive Bay’s indulgence, since he crafted a terrific, original thriller that is not a sequel and features zero superheroes. There was a time when Bay was seen as the best action filmmaker in Hollywood, and later among its worst. On a long enough timeline, it seems, filmmaker and viewer sensibilities can align once again.
Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures
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