OUT NOW: Ambulance

 Needing to support his family, Will Sharp (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) turns to his brother Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal) for help.

Help turns out to be a bank robbery with a haul worth 32 million dollars.

When the robbery goes wrong, the brothers end up in an ambulance with a wounded cop (Jackson White) and an EMT (Eiza González)  trying to keep him alive…

Ambulance is a type of movie that I love, a one-location thriller along the lines of Speed or Unstoppable. 

 

And on top of that, this movie has great bones. It has some thematic meat (America’s health care system is basically the villain) and some solid character arcs for the key players. 

 

I want to give it credit for these things because for most of its two-and-a-half hour runtime I was frustrated by the gulf between the script and Bay's established style.

 

This movie is a prime example of how to screw up basic geography.

 

Michael Bay is always going to be Michael Bay - he has never been a favorite of mine, but I will admit that there were a few times I was happy to see the old trademarks: the low angle, the lense flares, the slow motion, the 360 degree shots.

After two-and-a-half hours I was exhausted. I was also narratively and spatially lost.

I think the script for this one is solid, but in terms of how it is told, Ambulance is a failure. 

The story boils down to a chase, with the conflict between the occupants of the titular vehicle. This story requires as a base minimum that we can follow the vehicle as it moves through locations, understand where it is in relation to pursuit vehicles and obstacles.

Despite the material, Bay still over-cuts his scenes, and is incapable of providing an establishing shot so that we can follow what is going on. There were multiple moments where I could not figure out where the characters were in relation to each other in the ambulance. 

There are times where Bay’s aesthetic preferences work for the movie - the character’s growing sense of entrapment, the fetishisation of police hardware reinforcing how hopeless their situation is.

The movie can be claustrophobic - but most of the time, it is because the filmmakers have failed to establish a clear sense of geography.

The actors are fine - Abdul-Mateen II gives the movie a sense of pathos (he does have the best character), while González adds a flinty professional veneer to her beleaguered hostage. Gyllenhaal’s hyperactive performance feels more at home with Bay’s style, although it felt a little disconnected from the rest of the cast.

Overall, Ambulance is a frustrating overlong thriller that deserved a more pared-down and restrained execution.