Sometimes Michael Bay just can’t help himself. With Ambulance, he indulges in all those traits that have been his stock and trade since he broke out of the music video dungeon with Bad Boys back in 1995. Ummm, wonder what he would have made of slap-gate?
The action is relentless and you best not have vertigo as the overuse of drone footage will turn your stomach into knots. There is also an almost complete lack of believability in the reality of what takes place on the screen. Criminal laws are broken by the characters and physics laws by the director.
The action is set during a Los Angeles bank robbery gone wrong. This leads to a chase scene that lasts 90% of the film’s running time. Its outrageousness brings to mind OJ and his Bronco and they end up trashing almost as many cars as John Landis did in the Blues Brothers.
Bay pulls out all the stops with a mindset of relentless activity and once you pack away your sense of disbelief you can have a good time. Jake Gyllenhaal gets to overact in every scene, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II gets to be the sensitive one and Eiza González gets to satisfy the Megan Fox factor. It’s all never less than big, dumb, and fun of fun.
Rob Hudson
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