Review: Hear Me Out, Michael Bay’s ‘Ambulance’ is Pretty Great
“Who wears Birkenstocks to a bank robbery?”
If asked, American audiences could probably recognize a Michael Bay film. Not only because his films have become something of a running punchline throughout culture, but also because all his films feature Bay’s aggressive stylistic choices that are distinctly grand in excess, rife with macho bravado, and consciously indulgent towards their own nonsense. He has directed some of the best action movies to ever come out of the Hollywood system and, at the same time, some of the worst. Frankly, he has more bad films than good, but it’s undeniable that Bay is an American Auteur; after all, auteur theory does not preclude poor taste.
But every now and then, and it has been a while, Michael Bay’s earnest sincerity for his bombastic style yields something truly great, where the creative choices align and all the ridiculousness becomes part of the charm. Armageddon is a perfect example of this. It’s one of my favorite action films of all time, and I lovingly describe it as a film that has its head so far up its own ass that it comes out the other side and looks normal. Michael Bay’s latest film Ambulance doesn’t quite reach those levels of absurdity, but it’s certainly up there. This time around Bay made something that is true to his manic tendencies while also being a superbly entertaining, chaotic, action flick that’s his best film in well over two decades.
Structurally, the most readily available comparison for Ambulance is Tony Scott’s Unstoppable, the 2010 action flick that saw Denzel Washington and Chris Pine helm a run away freight train in high octane fashion. Once the train leaves the station in that movie, the plot prohibits any sort of lull in the action, delivering seventy-plus minutes of unfettered suspense and thrills. The same is true for Ambulance. It begins with a quick and simple setup established in less than twenty minutes. Straight shooter Will (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) needs money for his wife’s surgery. While asking his bonded brother Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal) for a loan, he is unexpectedly roped into a bank heist. That bank heist goes south, a cop is shot in the process, and through chance and circumstance, both Will and Danny end up on the run in an ambulance they hijacked that just so happens to contain the wounded cop and an EMT (Eiza Gonzáles).
Thus begins a nearly two hour, manically-orchestrated, extravaganza of destruction, absurdity, and “Bayhem.” The titular ambulance barrels down Los Angeles freeways and streets with reckless abandon, flipping over pursuing cop cars and blasting through conveniently placed vendor stalls, all the while they are hounded by a crack team of FBI agents. Inside the ambulance, tensions mount. Not only is the EMT working against Will and Danny, but if the cop dies, both of them will face life in prison. There is not only danger from outside the ambulance, but also within, and the inherent stakes baked into this high concept premise feels like a perfect match for the tendencies of Michael Bay.
Low angle dutch tilts. Handheld, run and gun shooting. High-speed drone shots. Deliberately destroying cameras to get right in the middle of the action. Stitching it all together with fever pitch editing and dousing it with a heavy, heavy amount of 90s action flair. These are what have come to define Bay’s creative tool kit and they are as excessive as they’ve ever been. Had the film taken itself so serious the success of this style would be a different story, but the comic relief in Ambulance is so farcical that it’s readily apparent that this film is not taking itself seriously and neither should you. The premise doesn’t require anything sophisticated (Pain and Gain being a prime example of Bay’s tendencies failing a narrative that needed something more), just a penchant for action spectacle that delivers where it counts, which Bay does in heaps.
There are so many insane things in Ambulance that no one in Hollywood is doing anymore. Namely, the practical stunt work and vehicle choreography. While major studios have migrated to the stale look of green screen, Bay keeps it real with true to life stunts involving car pile ups, low flying helicopter stunts, and a laughable amount of his signature firework explosions. The fact that Bay only shot this on a reported $40 million budget seems almost unbelievable given the chaos on screen. It goes back to Bay’s affinity and commitment for excess that this film works as well as it does. Had it not been in his hands, it wouldn’t be this indulgently great.
During the screening I was at, the man to my left wasn’t having the press pits’ laughter and cheers, even looking over at us at one point and whispering to his friend, “That’s not something you laugh at.” Unfortunately, this man was taking the film seriously. It was as if the innumerable illogical events taking place on screen failed to lower his guard. It was no sooner than midway through the film when the leads suture a ruptured spleen *with a hair clip* that I think he realized this movie was not the film he thought it was, because there after he joined in on the collective reactions of the theater. I like to believe he enjoyed it much more from then on, and if you approach Ambulance with the same irreverence, you’ll find one of the most glorious Hollywood action films rarely seen in this day and age.
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