Michael Bay is Hollywood’s crown prince of spectacle. His films are abrasive, fast-moving, very noisy, often brilliantly made but with no subtlety or emotional depth.
The Armageddon and Transformers director is back in his usual “bang the audience on the head with a saucepan” mode in his new LA-set thriller, Ambulance, whose script could certainly have done with some emergency aid.
Afghanistan War veteran Will Sharp (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) is struggling to adjust to civilian life. He needs money to pay for his wife’s operation. His adopted brother, Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal), is a career criminal and, very reluctantly, Will agrees to join him and his crew on a bank job.
The heist goes badly wrong and most of the gang members are killed – but Will and Danny escape by flagging down an ambulance carrying a wounded cop. Emergency worker Cam Thompson (Eiza González) is in the back of the vehicle, trying to keep the officer alive. From here, it develops into a very prolonged chase movie.
Bay makes inventive use of the Los Angeles River – a location seen in movies from Point Blank to Grease. If you enjoy stunts and explosions, you’ll find plenty to relish here. The drawback, though, is that the storytelling tone oscillates wildly. Bay seems uncertain whether he is making a tongue-in-cheek action picture, a pastiche of Michael Mann’s Heat, or an urban tragedy about a latter-day Cain and Abel.
Gyllenhaal’s Danny is a ruthless criminal who will suddenly fret about damaging his cashmere sweater. Abdul-Mateen II is supposed to be the more level-headed brother but his decision-making is equally self-destructive.
Courageous and self-sacrificing, González’s Cam is the moral centre of the movie. We learn that she flunked out of medical school because she “got addicted to speed”.
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It is an addiction that Bay shares – albeit a different kind of speed. He directs in his usual hyperactive way, and fills the soundtrack with juddering noises and screeching music.
With Bay, it’s never a case of reaching a crescendo; he starts at maximum intensity and stays there. But as one stunt, crash or shoot-out follows another, the effect becomes more deadening than exhilarating.