Michael Bay’s latest, the L.A. action extravaganza “Ambulance,” calls to mind one of the many, many oft-quoted lines from “The Big Lebowski.” John Goodman’s Walter Sobochak, in his rebuttal of the “believe in nothing” stance of the nihilists, proclaims, “Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos.” Now, to be clear, I am not comparing the work of Mr. Bay to the philosophies of the Nazis. But I am saying that his distinctive aesthetic – the perpetual golden hour, the relentlessly prowling camera, the three cuts when one will do, the drone shots on speed – is at least an aesthetic, and after over a decade of studio blockbusters designed by committee and shot through a thin glaze of pixels and mud, it is refreshing to encounter a film that feels like it’s made by a single human being. His style, which seemed downright clobbering a decade and a half ago, now feels like a breath of fresh air. Such is the Overton Window of popular entertainment.
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“Ambulance” requires some patience, because its opening scenes are rough. We first meet Will Sharp (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, on the phone, pleading for help from a heartless insurance company so his wife can get an experimental medical treatment. “This is real life, ok? This is real life,” he pleads, as their baby cries and the strings swell and Bay’s camera caresses Will’s war medals, and yes, he’s laying it on a little thick. (That score swells patriotically again a couple of scenes later, when he talks about serving his country, a pure corn reminder that Bay did, in fact, direct “13 Hours.”)
In desperation, he reaches out to his semi-estranged brother Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal), a career criminal who notes, “When you need something you call me, huh?” Will asks Danny for a loan; Danny counters with an offer: they’re hitting a bank that very day (coincidentally enough), and need another man for the job. It’s a big risk, for a big payday. “It’s time to for you to do something for yourself. For your family.” In other words, screenwriter Chris Fedak (adapting Laurits Munch-Petersen’s 2005 Danish thriller) is giving Will every imaginable excuse for the crimes he’s about to commit.
Needless to say, the heist goes wrong in about six different ways, leading to the juicy central premise: these two desperate criminals hijack an ambulance, with paramedic Cam (Eiza González) and dying cop Zach (Jackson White) in the back. LAPD and FBI are in hot pursuit, Cam is trying every trick in the book to keep Zach alive, and Danny and Will have to figure out how the hell to make a getaway. “We’re a locomotive,” Danny insists. “We don’t stop.” And once it hits that point, “Ambulance” really starts to sing – because Bay adopts the same M.O. While neither film’s equal, this lean, mean middle section recalls “The General” or “Fury Road”; it becomes a relentless motion machine. And, this filmmaker being who he is, the less it stops to ask questions, build characters, or have people talk to each other, the better.
And make no mistake, the dialogue scenes are mostly terrible. But complaining about Bay’s dialogue, at this point in his career, is fruitless – he’s not changing that up anytime soon, and elements like “plot” and “character” exist primarily to get us from one action scene to the next. And those scenes are very good; the initial heist and shoot-out want to be “Heat” so bad that it’s borderline embarrassing, but the admiration is exhibited in the craft; those scenes, tense and tightly executed, have a jittery, kinetic energy that carries through to the extended chase that follows. And that chase, which occupies the bulk of the picture, is not only thrilling but credible, with Bay’s primary reliance on practical effects and stunts lending real weight and gravity to the events. It’s also gorier than you might expect – particularly a bit of improvised surgery with an ace pay-off – and while I’ve grown incredibly tired of incongruent needle drops, we have one here that’s quite effective.
Also, whatever his flaws, Bay still knows how to shoot movie stars like movie stars, and Gyllenhaal gets the full treatment. He looks hot, makes a convincing crook, and is clearly having a great time; in the early, rougher passages, his verve and manic energy almost single-handedly keeps the picture afloat. (“IT’S CASHMERE!” he thunders, when Cam blasts him with a fire extinguisher in a failed getaway attempt). He’s so entertaining that by the second half, he’s getting laughs merely with the force of his cockeyed line readings. González is plenty charismatic, though she’s saddled with a dumb arc, and all but disappears for a long stretch of the climax. And Abdul-Mateen plays the (comparatively) likable criminal sympathetically straight, pushing the picture into stickier moral territory the longer it goes – are we hoping that the guy who shot the cop gets away with it? “We’re not the bad guys,” Danny insists. “It’s not that simple!”
Bay still can’t resist his worst impulses; the copious references to his own movies are just a touch indulgent (it’s strange to watch Michael Bay go full Kevin Smith), particularly a “The Rock”-style superfluous gay caricature. (It’s not 1996, Michael, and a gay person is not a punch line onto themselves.) And he adds nearly a full hour to the original film’s slim, 80-minute running time – much of it presumably in the third act, which lingers way too long on the aftermath and tidy emotional cleanup (including a big concluding dramatic beat for Cam that panders so hard, it’s frankly insulting). But considering how much of the last decade-and-a-half Bay has spent grinding out his increasingly depressing series of braindead “Transformers” movies, these are small complaints. “Ambulance” is absolutely ridiculous, and undeniably entertaining. [B]