AMBULANCE. A Bayhem-Infused Human Drama [REVIEW]

What is Ambulance? Every Michael Bay movie premiere is a small holiday for me. It does not even matter whether it is Transformers 7282 or something with The Rock on steroids. I just like his cinema. For all the bad things and all the good things. Sure, one will not find the makings of Cannes in his craft, no one will hand him a Golden Bear, but the guy is a big kid who fully understands the function of cinema as escapist entertainment. The guy plants those dreams of hyper-American spectacle cinema, filled with silliness and a screenplay hiding in the corners, but one cannot take away from him that he simply has an excellent eye for visuals, knows how to show things on screen in a way that makes them Bayed to the moon.

And he is a film auteur – the scatterbrained kind who would play beer pong at Queen Elizabeth’s party – but his films are always something, with an inimitable style. Those music-video inserts, commercial tricks (he has had an excellent career in those industries, after all) – the guy does exactly the kind of stuff he wants to watch himself. It is hard not to get infected by that charmingly infantile love for making things simply happen on screen – fast, efficiently, sentimentally, fun. Things should explode. It should be fast.

It should be loud. This is pure entertainment cinema. Bay fries his burgers and sure, the bun is usually burnt, the sauce expired, but I bite into this cholesterol bomb, the contents of the bun dripping down my face and gut, and I have no problem with it. My face lights up, I usually reach filmic nirvana during his films – that moment where glorious stupidity passionately kisses polished coolness, creating a product that is, well, a product, but also the child of a director who loves his job. I will not hide that Bay is my Nolan and he will remain so. I have no issue with that. But I will say again – I am fully aware that he is no Bergman, and his works are flawed beyond reason. It is just that I can forgive him more when once every few years he bursts in with TNT in hand and shouts now I will tell you about family problems BUT FOR TWO HOURS AN AMBULANCE WILL BE SPEEDING WHILE THE ENTIRE LOS ANGELES POLICE FORCE GIVES CHASE.

And that is exactly what Ambulance is – loud, rushing at breakneck speed, subordinated to the aesthetic of depicting a massive mess in an American city, with a core that is a seemingly simple story about two brothers, only told in that absurdly naive, unhinged, Bay-typical manner. Interestingly, this film is a light remake of Ambulancen, a Danish drama from 2005 directed by Laurits Munch-Petersen. But where that had a minimal budget and focused on the characters, here everything moves so fast that there is barely any time for that.

Seriously, I have not been physically this exhausted by a film in years – after forty minutes I was already drenched, panting like after a marathon, because my eyes could not keep up with the editing cuts, and there was still twice that runtime left. I kept wondering what more Bay could add to the story of criminals fleeing in an ambulance, and it turned out he added everything – an operation without anesthesia using only hands on a split-open belly is just the tip of the iceberg of absurdities thrown in here. From the beginning, Bay does not hide that he wants to go big – nothing is stopping him, he has the budget, so whatever comes to his mind, he throws into the movie.

Ten minutes of his own version of a bank heist escape from Heat? Sure, we have time, space, money. At the start, he briefly outlines the movie’s issue – one of the characters, Will, is a veteran with a wife sick with cancer who needs money. He goes to his foster brother Danny, with whom he shares a deep bond and past collaboration with their father, a legendary criminal. Danny is still in the business, so he says we have a bank job in five minutes, millions at stake, but we do not have a driver(!), are you in? Will dives right in – of course, the plan falls apart, the team is wiped out, and the two begin to flee in an ambulance. Inside is a paramedic and a cop shot by Will.

From that moment on, the film never stops – and for 90 minutes the viewer steps onto a cinematic treadmill so intense they will need to soak their feet in suds for a week after. On the one hand, it is the perfect production for a group movie outing – Bay might want to say something serious here, but the action is so over-the-top the viewer will be shaking their head throughout the screening. Every sequence aims to be ultra-cool – a deluge of editing cuts, bizarre camera angles, shots seemingly from every drone available in Los Angeles. It is exhausting to the mind. But it is undeniably an experience – no one else makes such charmingly bombastic nonsense today. Even during a conversation between the brothers, the camera circles them as if trying to break a Guinness record in revolutions per second. A true circus – grenades, shootouts, booby-trapped cars, scout helicopters. And it all started with two guys just trying to hide in an ambulance. Bay never makes it easy. But what saves the whole thing from becoming a total joke of a naive plot and delightfully dumb action are the performances – the cast is genuinely good. Although the characters are thin, Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II try to breathe life into them. And given the material, they do quite well.

Gyllenhaal especially has plenty of room to shine and clearly enjoys playing a guy constantly scheming how to save his own skin. The brotherly conflict in the cramped ambulance space is smartly balanced by Eiza González. Sure, these are basic emotions and problems sketched with a broad stroke, but the actors are simply too good to let that drag them down. Ambulance is utter nonsense, pure popcorn cinema in a state of constant explosion – too long, technically overwhelming, giving the viewer no breath. It runs nonstop to the rhythm of epic music. But at the same time, it is satisfying, great for a post-movie chat over a beer with friends, and extravagant in a way few directors today can afford.

Anyone who knows Bay knows what to expect – no surprises here. There is no deeper play with the theme (as in Pain & Gain), it is just a blockbuster burning a pile of cash to entertain the audience for two hours. And Bay still knows how to do it with a bang.