Ambulance

Ambulance
Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Eiza Gonzalez, Garret Dillahunt
Directed by Michael Bay

You can tell when a certain director is involved in a project, and that's mostly due to their staples: they do almost the same thing no matter what movie they make. You see an offbeat trailer featuring Johnny Depp? It's a Tim Burton piece. A mobster trailer? Martin Scorsese. A creature feature that delves into deep humanistic ideals? Guillermo del Toro. So when the "Ambulance" trailer started, I thought to myself, "wow, this feels like a Michael Bay film," only to have appear on the screen: "A Michael Bay film." Michael Bay has been parodied (especially by "South Park") as a director who abandons intelligent scripts and dialogue with over-the-top explosions, dizzying camera angles, the overuse of the sunspot filter, and camera shaking so bad you think the cameraman did a few lines of cocaine before filming began. "Ambulance" has all of these hallmarks of Michael Bay, and while it did serve its purpose of being entertaining for about an hour and a half, there was still another thirty-plus minutes in the film that made it almost excruciating to watch, if only due to the bland repetitive nature of the product.

It started off as an ordinary day for brothers Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Will (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) Sharp, as well as EMT paramedic Cam Thompson (Eiza Gonzalez). Will is a former war vet who needs over $200,000 for his wife's surgery, and he turns to Danny - a frequent bank robber - to get the money. They decide to get a crew to rob a local bank, but things go terribly array when Officer Zach (Jackson White) comes into the bank to ask out a teller. As events spiral out of control and the police get involved, Zach gets shot and Cam arrives on scene to treat him, but her ambulance is taken by Danny and Will as they make their escape. As she tries to treat Zach in the back of the ambulance, the brothers try to avoid the growing police force following them, led by Captain Monroe (Garrett Dillahunt). As the day progresses, it becomes less and less likely that everyone will make it through alive, as Will drives the ambulance through the turbulent Los Angeles streets while trying to avoid capture.

"Ambulance" could've been a decent movie if it shaved at least thirty minutes off its way-too-long runtime, but clocking in at two hours and sixteen minutes, it's way too long for Michael Bay to elongate his (probably) two-page script. I say that because the film is highly formulaic, it offers absolutely nothing in the way of exciting twists or turns, and ultimately ends up exactly how you expect it to. It's another case of "well, I saw the trailer, so I saw the whole movie," and in this case it's not a shame, because it saves you an almost "No Way Home" length actioneer that overstays its welcome before hitting the two hour mark.

That's not to say the film is terrible, but it's just too long for the product it delivers. Two brothers rob a bank, hijack an ambulance, gets involved in a car chase, all the while holding an EMT and her slowly dying patient hostage. Cut-and-dry as they come, but script-writing isn't Bay's strong suit. Where he does shine is in the action, and thankfully "Ambulance" doesn't skimp on that: every few minutes there's an explosion, a high-speed chase, and lots of dizzying camerawork that keeps you at least mildly entertained, despite the annoyingly repetitive back-and-forth with its stereotypical characters.

Those characters are played by some stellar actors, who seem to want to give it their all despite the absurdity of the story itself. The two brothers are played by Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and they play their roles as the typical "good criminal/bad criminal," as Gyllenhaal's Danny is way too exaggerated with his chronic head shakes that makes me think he suffered some whiplash during filming, as well as his overuse of phrases like "we're not the bad guys!" and "everyone is going to get out of this alive!" while probably downing Red Bulls behind the scenes in order to maintain his constant state of crazy. On the flip side, Abdul-Mateen II's Will is more subdued, nicer, and only is doing this "for my family" (Vin Diesel would be so proud). He doesn't want to see anyone hurt, he takes a caring nature to Cam, and aw shucks he's just a man down on his luck. Bay tries to make Will sound more heroic than he is, but to me both men are in way over their heads, and are both the villains in this tale.

Eiza Gonzalez's Cam is rather typical as well: she's the best EMT out there, yet she's so hardened that she doesn't particularly care about the patients once they arrive at the hospital - to her, she did her job, and she can go right to eating at a Mexican restaurant after saving a little girl who's impaled by a fence post. So of course she goes through a complete transformation due to her being the unwitting hostage of the Non-Hardy boys, as she's forced to try to save the witless cop's life while the ambulance is speeding down the road at over sixty miles an hour.

The entire concept of criminals taking an ambulance as a getaway car - if you think about it - is highly humorous. You'd want to get a car that doesn't attract a lot of attention, so when you're blaring your siren in a big ole ambulance zooming down the street, you're bound to draw attention. Then again, the film wouldn't be called "Ambulance" if it was so - maybe "Limousine," or "Car," or "Truck"...I'm just going off on a tangent because this film is so absurd it doesn't require much thought to write a review about it. Much like Bay's other outings, it foregoes intellectual thought and goes straight on a roller coaster of dizzying heights and faster lows as intense as Bay's camerawork, and both have the same outcome - you'll be vomiting due to motion sickness by the end of it all, but in the end you'll think it was a fun - albeit too long - ride.

The Score: B+