How do I come to grips with Ambulance? The film is directed by Michael Bay, a filmmaker I’d long considered to be the definition of cinematic dearth, a panderer of racist and misogynistic stereotypes whose deranged editing style was a successful hack attempt to tempt the MTV generation into theaters. Bay was the man behind the Transformers franchise (of which I’ve never seen) and the face of shallow Hollywood filmmaking. Ambulance, his latest film, is a frenetic chase film with a script that borrows from 90’s action classics like Heat and Speed. Ambulance doesn’t have a fraction of those films’ wit, but it is easily the greatest film Bay has ever made, a movie that not only excites with explosive car flips and firecracker performances, but also showcases a singular visual aesthetic. In a time when blockbusters are manufactured with an efficiency that leaves personal style in the dust, suddenly Bay comes off looking like an auteur.
A lotta of Ambulance‘s success as a movie does come from timing. We’re in the midst of a decade and a half of being force fed superhero tentpoles that regurgitate the same familiar stories over and over again. In that climate, the kinetic mayhem of Michael Bay comes off fresher than it has in the past. It does matter that Ambulance is, in fact, a good movie, with a script by Chris Fedak, that checks off many “Save the Cat” boxes, but more than anything, has a terrific sense of pacing. The concept – two bank robbers highjack an ambulance and the EMT inside it – is spun into a two hour plus opus with freewheeling drone cinematography and heart-pounding suspense. Fedak’s script, which hits the usual notes and never really leaves you in doubt of the story’s conclusion, still manages to craft high-wire tension throughout its insane plot.
If this is Bay’s Michael Mann movie, then Ambulance‘s star, Jake Gyllenhaal, is giving his closest interpretation of a 90s Al Pacino performance, infusing every line reading with an unhinged, cocaine-y ludicrousness that keeps the film’s energy at a full 10. Gyllenhall plays Danny Sharp, a generational criminal whose father left a reputation of cruelty and violence in his wake. Ambulance‘s main protagonist is Danny’s adopted brother, Will (a solid Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), who has managed to grow outside the Sharp crime syndicate, getting married and having a baby. Will’s wife (Moses Ingram) needs an experimental surgery – for what, we never learn – that insurance won’t cover. As a last resort, Will defies his wife’s wishes and turns to Danny for a loan. Danny, heartened by his estranged brother’s plight, tells him the money can only come if Will helps him on his next big score, which is happening at that very moment.
The job is a bank robbery to the tune of $32 million. Will is brought into a group of rough types that scour and scoff at his obvious ambivalence. Danny’s plan is tight as a whistle, getting in and out of the bank before it’s even open, but their scheme is undone by a police officer, Zach (Jackson White), who wishes to ask a teller out on a date (a plot point so ridiculous, it only adds to Ambulance‘s absurd mystique). Forcing his way into the bank, Zach walks into the robbery and sets off a cops and robbers shootout (a plain clothes brigade of LAPD officers were already scoping out the job hoping to catch them on the way out), that leaves the entire crew dead, save for Danny and Will. Their escape is aided by stealing an ambulance that just so happens to have the gunshot-wounded Zach, and an EMT named Cam Thompson (a too-good-for-this-movie Eiza Gonzalez). Holding Cam and an unconscious Zach hostage, they get out of the bank and begin a high speed pursuit through the freeways and back alleys (and rivers!) of Los Angeles.
The most troubling aspect of Bay’s worst films are his treatment of women, often casted and directed in objectifying ways – the worst kind of male gaze. Cam Thompson is one of those female characters written with almost exclusively masculine traits; she’s standoffish, doesn’t play well with others (no one wants to be in her ambulance!), and is a character whose universal incompatibility is seen as one of the reasons she is crucially good at her job. Casting the objectively beautiful Eiza Gonzalez in this part feels like another Bay stunt, positioning the regal actress as eye candy for the male audience. Much to her credit, Gonzalez makes so much more out of this flimsy part, playing Cam intensely and empathetically, finding the depths within the shallows, never caving to any romantic implications or suggesting that her impersonal demeanor is something to overcome. It’s the kind of performance that should make her a movie star in her own right, if that were still a thing that happened.
Gonzalez’s excellent performance in a way is a key to what makes Ambulance work. The film has all the usual trademarks of Bay’s unsavory work – ill-suited attempts at humor, racial stereotypes, copaganda – but for the first time there is some actual interrogation of these hackneyed cliches. The LAPD’s obscenely militaristic process for trying to catch Will and Danny (Garrett Dillahunt leads a group of feverish plain clothes officers that seem to intentionally look like Proud Boys), is exposed frequently as indulgent and ineffectual, causing an unknowable amount of monetary damage on the taxpayer’s dime. Even Will and Danny’s relationship – Will being the black son adopted into a white family – plays more with the racial dynamics than you’d ever expect. Their brotherly love is proven to be a heartfelt lampshade over a power dynamic that Will has little control over.
Fedak’s script has more intelligence than you’d expect, but it’s still dragged a bit by some of Michael Bay’s baser instincts. This is a film with a very long preproduction history so it’s hard to know how much of Fedak’s original story was replaced by various Bay-isms. That said, Bay’s directorial vision here is spectacular, utilizing the most effective drone camerawork I’ve ever seen. The camera, free from the restraints of a more classical rigging apparatus, zooms through the streets and high rises of LA and is constantly coming dangerously close to the film’s many car crashes. In a way, the exciting camerawork replaces Bay’s usual undisciplined editing as Ambulance‘s main visual progression. It’s startlingly good and it makes the big screen experience of this film truly exceptional. This is blockbuster cinema at its best, a lowest common denominator spectacle with a great star performance. This is the movie Michael Bay should be remembered by.
Directed by Michael Bay