We’ve finally reached the end of Summer Baycation. And in a shocking twist that I truly was not expecting, we wrap things up with the best film Bay’s produced in nearly twenty years.
In 2012 Steven Spielberg, a recurring character in this long and twisted saga, optioned Daniel H. Wilson’s then-just-released novel “Robopocalypse”. Spielberg and Dreamworks spent the better part of a year doing pre-production, location scouting, and visualization on the project. Chris Hemsworth and Anne Hathaway were cast, Drew Goddard was hired to pen the script, and Disney set to release it. Everything was ready. Then, as so often happens in Hollywood, Spielberg pumped the brakes and put the whole thing on hold. Six years went by, during which time Spielberg directed four other films. By 2018, Robopocalypse fell to Michael Bay, who was all set to direct the film after his Netflix-released 6 Underground. Fate apparently had it in for this project, because after finishing 6 Underground, Bay set to work on a completely different film titled “Black 5”, penned by Transformers: Dark of the Moon writer Ehren Kruger.
And then COVID-19 put the entire world on hold. Like many of us, Bay got fed up with being cooped up indoors. He begged his agent to find him a small project to shoot just to get him out of the house. Bay recalled a pitch he’d received in 2015, a remake of a 2005 Danish thriller about two brothers who rob a bank, steal an ambulance as a getaway car, and have to contend with the vehicle’s EMT and her patient as they make their escape. It was exactly what he was looking for, so he pitched the idea to Universal, who gave him $40 million to crash a bunch of cars and call it a movie.
Produced under stringent COVID safety protocols and shot entirely in downtown Los Angeles, Ambulance is a lean, mean adrenaline machine. On the one hand, this is a tense, single-room drama with four characters trapped in a moving vehicle. On the other hand, it’s also an action movie in the “it takes a village” mold of mid-90s classics like Speed and Die Hard with a Vengeance, where we watch the police deploy every resource at their disposal to stop a bad situation from getting worse. (But of course it gets worse. So much worse.) It’s a simple story told exceedingly well which, considering Bay’s track record for needlessly long films, feels like a genuine miracle.
The film opens with Will Sharp (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), a retired marine having trouble getting his military insurance to pay for his wife’s chemo treatments. He turns to his adoptive brother Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal) for help, who immediately talks him into helping steal $32 million from a bank in downtown Los Angeles. During the heist, Will accidentally shoots rookie cop Zach (Jackson White), who gets loaded onto an ambulance and treated by EMT Cam (Eiza González). Moments later, Will and Danny hijack the same ambulance and flee the scene with police in pursuit. What follows is a whirlwind tour through the streets and back alleys of Los Angeles as Will deploys every military trick at his disposal to shake the cops, Danny spars with FBI Agent Clark (Keir O’Donnell) over the phone, and Cam tries desperately to keep Zach alive.
If Michael Bay was trying his hardest to make the spiritual successor to Speed, he damn well succeeded. The setup could not be simpler, but Bay gets a lot of room within that framework to hang a dozen uniquely tense setpieces. The heist itself is fairly cut and dry, but as soon as the wheels are in motion, things kick into gear. *ahem* Will leads the cops on a chase through cramped corridors and back alleys, reminiscent of the car chase in The Rock (which gets a direct nod in this movie, casting a harsh light on how long it’s been since that movie came out). He leads the cops to the Staples Center and weaves in and out of the pillars of the backstage loading area while Danny hangs out the back waving a machine gun like a maniac. Police helicopters buzz the ambulance in the LA River basin, a sequence heavily reminiscent of Terminator 2 (complete with a percussive T2-esque score).
I could go on, but you get the point. Bay pulls every trick in the book to make this a quintessential car chase film. And with the advent of drone technology, Bay makes particularly good use of them here. Swooping and diving around the skyscrapers of LA, flying in between cars at high speed, he puts us right in the middle of the action in a way that feels fresh and unique. I can’t tell if it’s due to COVID restrictions forcing Bay to think outside the box, or if this old dog is just eager to learn some new tricks. Either way, it fucking works. Ambulance is never less than a thrilling experience, and I’m frankly a little sad I missed the chance to see this in a theater. Then again, considering this came out at the height of COVID (early 2022, when my household actually had COVID), I’m gonna go easy on myself here.
The cast is all pretty great too. Jake Gyllenhaal has a history of being an overly energetic weirdo, and he absolutely doesn’t disappoint here. Danny starts the movie as a confident, charismatic nice guy character, but quickly switches into ruthless criminal mode when the time comes. By the end, Jake is a bug-eyed lunatic. I realize I just described like half a dozen Jake Gyllenhaal characters, but what can I say? It works. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is the glue that holds everything together, giving a remarkably toned-down, even-keel performance to balance Gyllenhaal out. And Eiza González, as the no-nonsense EMT who “can keep anyone alive for 20 minutes”, is game for anything the movie throws at her. At one point Cam has to cut Zach open and remove a bullet from his spleen, with the ambulance in motion, with cops chasing them, with three different doctors on a video call to walk her through it. The movie asks González to do so much and she just crushes it.
…I’m sorry, did you want me to say something about the film’s subtext or politics? Like how the hero is, once again, a soldier trying to do right by his family, and how the whole thing is set in motion thanks to the government’s failures at implementing healthcare? Or how Ambulance continues Bay’s losing streak at painting minorities with any kind of sympathetic brush (unless they’re on the poster, naturally)? I certainly could, but the movie has no time for these kinds of discussions. It’s more concerned with Jake Gyllenhaal going all Looney Tunes as he hangs from the side of a moving vehicle. I wish I could say the movie had any other thoughts in its head, but it just plain doesn’t.
Look, we humans are simple creatures. Who amongst us doesn’t enjoy a good trainwreck? Hell, we’ve been gathering to watch literal train wrecks since before the advent of cinema. So my feeling is it’s just plain nice to see Michael Bay out there keeping the art of crashing cars on film alive. On the blu-ray’s behind-the-scenes feature, Bay touts the expertise of his crew in knowing exactly how to execute the crazy shit he asks them to do. At times, things got out of hand, such as the one ambulance crash that almost ended very badly, and in times like that, it’s easy to ask why these things have to be done physically at all. But Michael Bay knows just as well as you and I that there will never be anything quite like the visceral thrill of watching two cars collide at high speed.
Ambulance is the perfect Michael Bay vehicle. For as many times as we’ve seen him reach for something more meaningful, or go for the big summer action paydays, Bay knows exactly what kind of auteur he is, and he’s most comfortable when he just gets to be a big kid playing in his sandbox. Free from the rigors of Transformers lore or the weight of historical significance, Ambulance gives us exactly what we want out of Michael Bay, and he seems all too happy to oblige. It’s infectious, and the movie is all the better for it.
At the box office, Ambulance broke even with just over $52 million. That’s mildly disappointing, though considering it came out during the height of COVID, that’s an easier pill to swallow. From here, Bay dipped a toe into the world of true crime stories, directing a five-episode miniseries on serial killer Hadden Clark. Robopocalypse and Black 5 are still on the table as far as I know, though he’s also apparently been roped into adapting… *checks notes* “Skibidi Toilet”? That feels like it has to be a joke, but considering the state of entertainment these days, who the hell even knows anymore.
Even if Ambulance disappointed at the box office, I very much doubt we’ve seen the last of Michael Bay as an action auteur. “Bayhem” is too powerful a force to disappear from the movies all together. Whether it’s in producing more Bad Boys films, or taking part in the Transformers brain trust, I know we’ll see Michael Bay back in theaters sooner rather than later.
NEXT TIME: We rank the films of Michael Bay.
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