Ambulance (2022)

[cinemiracle]

Title: Ambulance

Tagline: It was supposed to be a simple heist.

Genre: Action, Crime, Thriller

Director: Michael Bay

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Eiza González, Garret Dillahunt, Keir O'Donnell, Moses Ingram, A Martinez, Wale Folarin, Cedric Sanders, Jackson White, Colin Woodell, Olivia Stambouliah, Jesse Garcia, Victor Gojcaj, Remi Adeleke, Devan Long, Gary Sievers, Briella Guiza, Brendan Miller, Jose Pablo Cantillo

Release: 2022-03-16

Runtime: 136

Plot: Decorated veteran Will Sharp, desperate for money to cover his wife's medical bills, asks for help from his adoptive brother Danny. A charismatic career criminal, Danny instead offers him a score: the biggest bank heist in Los Angeles history: $32 million.

AMBULANCE gets my vote for being this year's (so far) most over the top film. A group of men try to rob a bank. A very far fetched storyline with the year's most irritating camera work.It looked as though it was mostly filmed during an earthquake. The camera rarely stops shaking. One gets dizzy and needs an ambulance after enduring the very shaky camerawork. Michael Bay has made much better movies but this isn't one of them.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

Back in the 90s, I used to defend Michael Bay. Sure, he offered the proverbial triumph of style over substance, and his movies could be dumber than the also proverbial box of rocks, but he delivered enough thrills and excitement for me to excuse these "sins".

Once we got to the 2000s, though, Bay's movies went into a more obvious decline. He could still put out the occasionally semi-winner - like the underrated "Pain and Gain" - but it felt like he just succumbed to his own self-cliches and stopped bothering to stretch his cinematic legs.

Which brings us to "Ambulance" - or "AmbuLAnce", if you prefer the stylized title. Here the director seems to have decided to be the Michael Bayest Michael Bay he could be and re-embrace the excesses of the 90s.

And that would be fine if his heart seemed to be in it. Hate him if you want, but the Bay of "The Rock" and "Armageddon" at least seemed COMMITTED to what he did.

Here Bay seems unsure how to approach the material in a manner that would tell the story well, so he just says "let's make the camera move a whole lot every second of the way". He clearly hopes that frenetic cinematography will convey the urgency and excitement that another filmmaker would demonstrate via little niceties like plot building and character development.

Bah - why bother with story and evolution when you can shake the camera like a Polaroid picture? Why actually attempt to tell a tale of interesting personalities when brief/cheap "exposition" will do?

"Ambulance" borrows from the "Speed" theme, as it comes with a moving vehicle that never - or rarely - stops. Here, though, no terrorist forces the characters to remain in perpetual motion.

Instead, the leads just decide they're like a shark who must swim or die, so that becomes the movie's excuse for why they drive drive drive drive drive. It makes no sense, of course, but Bay doesn't care about that.

Like "Speed", "Ambulance" comes with a nearly comical real-world toll on potential connected casualties that the movie doesn't appear to consider. In both movies, authorities work to keep the lead vehicles on the go no matter how many civilians might get hurt or killed.

This becomes a concern with "Speed" if you think too hard, but the movie itself offers too much fun for me to care. With "Ambulance", the film lacks the escapism that allows me to ignore the borderline insane manner in which the cops endanger the public, however.

"Ambulance" tries to give us characters whose fates matter to us, but it flops. It makes the roles so thin and dull that I never care who lives or dies.

Ala "Speed", if the thrills worked, I wouldn't care so much. However, "Ambulance" produces action that causes headaches instead of racing pulses.

A lot of that stems from the awful camerawork. I get it: this is who Bay is, and he's never going to abandon spinning/moving cameras.

Still, Bay rarely goes quite this insane with these techniques. Those who suffer from motion sickness due to "shakycam" should be leery of "Ambulance" - it doesn't go to "Blair Witch Project" or "Cloverfield" levels, but it seems likely to inspire some nausea.

It doesn't help that "Ambulance" runs far too long. At 136 minutes, it comes with a running time well past what would make sense.

Would a 105-minute "Ambulance" become a GOOD film? No, but it would seem less padded and tedious than this one.

Bay might've hoped to recapture his 1990s mojo with "Ambulance", but he failed. Instead, he made an idiotic and boring collection of car chases and ridiculous scenes that adds up to a headache-inducing dud.

 

[SamT]

Heat wannabe? Fail! But wait it even gets worse as the movie goes on. Overall fail on every level you can imagine.
Ambulance will make you need an ambulance after.

 

[Jeffrey D]

The poster board for popcorn film. Gyllenhaal tries hard, but I was disappointed in how poor and frantic the editing was. Hard to understand why the producers rented or bought a fancy high performance truck (Ram Rebel TRX), then the editor and/or director chose to not show it in action.