Ambulance – Film Review

Needing money to cover his wife’s medical bills, a decorated veteran teams up with his adoptive brother to steal $32 million from a Los Angeles bank. However, when their getaway goes spectacularly wrong, the desperate thieves hijack an ambulance that’s carrying a severely wounded cop and an EMT worker. Caught in a high-speed chase, the two siblings must figure out a way to outrun the law while keeping their hostages alive.

Michael Bay has a reputation for making massively over-the-top action blockbusters absolutely littered with explosions, lens flares, and attractive girls. He definitely has a style and you can almost always tell you’re watching a Michael Bay movie without even checking who directed it, but strangely enough, he has had a few good movies in the past.

Granted, he hasn’t had a truly great film under his belt in a long, long time. But now, thankfully, I can safely say that his newest film, Ambulance, is the best film he has directed in decades. It’s almost entirely devoid of the Michael Bay-isms that we’ve come to be familiar with over the years.

Instead, with Ambulance, Bay actually attempts to craft a pulse-pounding story of two men trying to pull off a hugely dangerous bank robbery while also having a ton of heart and even some humor injected along the way. Does it all work? No. Sometimes the jokes fall flat and sadly, we never really get any time to sit down with any of our characters and delve deeper into them, but it’s still a great movie nonetheless.

All of the action sequences here are fantastic. Seriously great stuff to see here. Bay’s action scenes are notorious for being done in slow motion but gratefully, that’s not the case here. All of the action is stunning and the film as a whole is even more impressive when you consider that it takes place almost entirely in this one ambulance.

The performances across the board are also terrific, but most notably, Jake Gyllenhaal as Danny Sharp. As the War veteran, Gyllenhaal feels unbelievably unhinged to the point where you’re never really sure what he’s going to do next. I love whenever Gyllenhaal tackles roles that feel a bit scary. Sharp is a character that feels totally in control and yet completely crazy at the same time.

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is really the heart and soul of the film, though. It’s his character, Danny, that the film centers around and the film tries to flesh his character out more than anybody else’s. He delivers a heartfelt and thrilling performance here, as does Eiza González as Cam Thompson.

The cinematography from Roberto De Angelis is a thing of beauty. The film is scattered with tons of city-sweeping shots and aerials and it’s staggering to take in. It’s one of the best looking movies of the year which is quite surprising considering just how ugly most of Bay’s movies look.

Is Ambulance a game-changer? No. Is it one of the best movies of the year? No. Is it Michael Bay’s best movie in ages? You bet it is.