[Rating: Minor Rock Fist Down]
In Theaters Friday, April 8
A stock entry into Michael Bay’s way-too-busy-and-loud oeuvre, Ambulance plays the hits with tight-frame action sequences and overlapping chaos, ditching large-scale CGI rendering for old-fashioned rubber and steel. The formula of Ambulance just isn’t very balanced, however, with a script that too often relies on unearned gravitas and morality when bluster and bravado would do just as well.
The film opens with Marine veteran Will Sharp (Yahya Abdul Mateen II) haggling with the V.A. about his wife’s medical treatments, which aren’t covered by their insurance. Desperate for money, Will turns to his adopted brother, Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal), whose cashmere sweater and fleet of Corvettes marks him as wealthy, yet masks a darker truth. Danny is into some shady shit, running a crew of thieves with connections to L.A.’s criminal underworld, and Will’s arrival coincides with a bank job that is set to kick off in just minutes.
Meanwhile and across town, EMT Cam Thompson (Eiza González) is breaking in a new ambulance driver, demonstrating that she is both an excellent medic but also an emotionally detached hard-ass. And further still across Los Angeles, rookie cop Zach (Jackson White) is cruising around with his veteran partner, Mark (Cedric Sanders), who drives them back to the bank they’ve just visited so Zach can get the cute teller’s number. A set of circumstances this review won’t ruin brings all of them together, leading to Will and Danny’s post-robbery escape in an ambulance containing Cam and a wounded Zach. A fleet of LAPD squad cars and helicopters pursue, yet with two hostages on-board with Will and Danny, the cops have limited options.
The basic set-up is exciting, and there’s JUST enough backstory for the audience to connect with Will as a flawed lead, yet while the titular ambulance is indeed driven by him, who steers Ambulance (capital -A) is less clear. The movie is bookended by deadly serious sequences that put the spotlight on Cam and her work as an EMT, yet roughly 90% of the story is dominated by Bay-crazy action set-pieces fronted by Will and Danny. And while previous offerings like Bad Boys and The Rock (both mentioned unironically by characters in Ambulance, btw) have seen the director blend wild and whimsy with solemn and somber (passing the narrative ball generously between lead and side characters), this one flies a little too close to the sun.
In most of these other Bay-fronted pictures, the real-life consequences remain in the background for weight and are never hauled all the way out for full effect. The V/X rockets launch but don’t strike San Francisco; the asteroid pulverizes a shuttle yet ultimately misses Earth. In Ambulance, although the story is primarily concerned with Will and Danny, the way things wrap up lead one to the conclusion that this was Cam’s story all along (and hers is a lot less fun and detached from the fantastical elements that make the broader story palatable).
Is this a balls-to-the-wall crime caper about two brothers with complicated yet sometimes hilarious interpersonal issues, or is this a story about an emotionally damaged EMT who learns to love again? No spoilers here, but the movie never quite figures that out, focusing its attention instead on guaranteeing that there are as many nonsensical, spinning, twisting camera moves as possible. And holy shit, are there a lot of them. Presumably designed to put the viewer into a mental space akin to a literal download into this story, the repeated effect is similar to the sensation experienced when strapped into carnival rides like the Reverse Bungee or UltraMax.
Bay mercifully tires of (or just forgets about) these nauseating camera acrobatics by the 3rd act, where both director and movie seem wholly occupied with the corner they’ve painted themselves into. The cops in charge of the pursuit, LAPD Captain Monroe (Garrett Dillahunt) and FBI Agent Clark (Keir O’Donnell), establish the identity of their suspects early on, so the primary narrative goal line (getting away from the pursuers) is robbed of any real meaning. Indeed, even if Will and Danny escape, they’d instantly become two of the most wanted people on the planet: so what’s the point? Unless…this is really Cam’s movie? Or maybe Zach’s?
Which begs the question: who does the titular Ambulance belong to? For most of the thing, it all feels tongue-in-cheek, with characters referencing the Bay-verse and Gyllenhaal playing his role like Deadpool doing an improv reboot of Heat. Yet Cam’s arc and the sociopolitical baggage surrounding the Mark character (and his fellow officers’ disregard of the safety of civilians and suspects) throws the broader recipe off and draws audience attention away from what is primarily an escapist lark. It would be like The Rock adding a subplot about how the whole Alcatraz hostage situation was affecting the crisis in Sarajevo.
It’s peculiar, and it doesn’t belong with the admittedly zany and occasionally entertaining movie that Gyllenhaal is in (primarily by himself). Bay fans will have plenty to gnaw on when Ambulance hauls out classic car-chase set-pieces like crashing through a sidewalk farmer’s market at 50 mph, or helicopters playing slalom with bridges in pursuit, yet this one isn’t exactly reinventing the cinematic action wheel. Fun enough at times to justify its existence, yet tonally inconsistent with a dash of thematic schizophrenia, Ambulance hits too many bumps along the way, ultimately failing in its attempts to resuscitate a movie with one too many critical injuries.
“Obvious Child” is the debut novel of Warren Cantrell, a film and music critic based out of Seattle, Washington. Mr. Cantrell has covered the Sundance and Seattle International Film Festivals, and provides regular dispatches for Scene-Stealers and The Playlist. Warren holds a B.A. and M.A. in History, and his hobbies include bourbon drinking, novel writing, and full-contact kickboxing.
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