Ambulance (Film Review)

 2022 Universal Pictures
Directed by: Michael Bay; Written by: Chris Fedak (Based upon: Ambulancen by Laurits Munch-Petersen and Lars Andreas Pedersen)
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and Eiza González
MPAA Rating: R; Running Time: 136 Minutes
The Nicsperiment Score: 8/10

Will Sharp is a decorated veteran, but he can't get the VA to pay for his wife's $230K surgery. Against Will's wife's wishes, he goes to his criminal brother, Danny, to ask for a loan. Danny doesn't have the money because he's tied all of his resources into a $32 million bank heist...and Danny wants Will to help. Against Will's better judgement, he tags along with Danny's team, and sure enough, the heist goes horribly awry. All of the team dies but Danny and Will, and after a tussle with the police, Will finds himself not only inadvertently shooting a cop, but going along with Danny's idea to take the injured policeman hostage. Unfortunately, that policeman just ends up being in the back of the ambulance...with the EMT still inside. Will is tasked with driving the ambulance, psychotic and unpredictable brother at his side, while the EMT tries to save the wounded policeman's life. Now the brothers not only have to evade police pursuit, but ensure their law enforcement hostage lives--so that the cops and soon enough, the FBI, don't start using lethal force. A white-knuckle, car-smashing, camera-spinning ride ensues.
I've slagged Michael Bay as much as anyone. I enjoyed the hell out of Bad Boys and The Rock in the 90's, but after the bloated noise of Armageddon, Pearl Harbor, and the Transformers films, his style was starting to feel to me like nothing more than a visual headache. However, something strange started happening in the 2010's. The word "auteur" began to be thrown around more and more in sentences featuring the name, "Michael Bay." Certainly, the man has a singular visual style. Constant camera movement, constant cuts, flashy lighting, lots of sparks, an orange or teal filter, at least one shot of a translucent American flag flapping in a breeze in front of the sun, the camera spinning around a female character making a concerned or worried face at the traumatic experience she's found herself a part of. Turns out, all of those elements are featured in his 2022 film, Ambulance. And as I took off early from work to see a movie alone for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began, digging my fingers into my knees, every second of Ambulance amping up my adrenaline, I suddenly realized something: if the movie doesn't have robots or Ben Affleck, I like me some Michael Bay.
Ambulance is the perfect vehicle for Bay's talents. He economically introduces his main characters in its opening minutes, using a shorthand the majority of his audience will understand, building stakes almost immediately. After that quick introduction , the majority of the movie is essentially one continuous chase/action scene, in which, with a modest, $40 million budget, Bay seems to be having the time of his life. CGI is little to be found, as Bay relishes in practical effects, smashing car after car, an army of roadside objects, and likely a few cameras in the process. Swooping drone shots give the vast geography of the city as punctuation to shots from Bay's street cameras as they whip around whiplashing police cars, roll with them as they tumble down hills, and zoom into them as they explode. It's a veritable ballet of twisted metal, as only Bay can deliver, while competently capturing the human drama within his vehicles of destruction.
As Danny, a gleefully unhinged Jake Gyllenhaal steals the show, hooping and hollering, sneering, screaming out threats, and clearly having a ball. Meanwhile, as the more morally sound, calm and focused straight man, Will, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II turns in a steely and reliable performance. The star-making turn here, though, comes from Eiza González as the dedicated but emotionally distant paramedic--I hope she does more action films. These three actors have great chemistry, and for a director known for mindless action, Bay does a hell of good job navigating the murky moral waters in which their characters find themselves immersed. Ambulance never loses its way, even as character after character is introduced, and the politics of the situation become more and more complex.
At the end of the day, though, the great character elements almost feel like lagniappe. Ambulance, at its core, is a thrill delivery device (I couldn't use "vehicle" again), and those thrills are nonstop. While Ambulance could be categorized as escapist fare, I found myself so stressed watching this that afterward I had to take some deep breaths. The movie never lets up until its satisfying conclusion.
Unfortunately, in today's cinematic climate, movies can essentially be categorized as either "superhero" or "not going to make any money." Even with its very modest $40 million budget, I suspect that Ambulance, as pure an action film as American cinemas have seen since maybe 2015's Mad Max: Fury Road, will struggle to break even. Hopefully, though, that doesn't turn out to be the case. A world where every movie has to be either a $300 million-budgeted tentpole or a $10 million dollar small-scale project isn't a world where movies are still a dominant art form. For the format to be healthy, films like Ambulance are a necessity. I never thought I'd consider "Michael Bay consistently working in his best element" as a marker for a successful movie ecosystem, but welcome to 2022.