Thought the madness of Michael Bay could be contained by a modest $40 mil budget? Think again! If anything, having a much smaller pile of cash at his disposal than usual forced him to transfer his chaotic energy into something that was driven by constant, contained action opposed to the sprawling, CGI-riddled setpieces that drove 6 Underground and the Transformers films. The distilling of his spectacle-heavy brand of filmmaking into a relentless, adrenaline-fueled package is what makes Ambulance one of Bay's finest hours as a director and his best pure action film since The Rock.
Ambulance takes basically no time to make its intentions clear. After the opening 15 minutes where the desperate situation that causes unemployed veteran Will Sharp (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II-who reenforces why he's a rising superstar with a quietly charismatic performance that boasts a surprising amount of nuance for a film that is rooted in palpable extremes) to reluctantly accept a gig robbing a downtown Los Angeles bank with his adopted brother Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal-who is in pure ham mode and loving every minute of it), and the strained, but loving relationship between Will and Danny is set up, Bay puts his foot on the gas and doesn't even consider looking back for a second. What follows is 2 hours of unimpeded relentless chaos that sees Bay enter full maniac maestro mode.
The practical car stunts that stem from the real time 90–100-minute chase sequence that ensues once the brothers hijack an ambulance that has an EMT (Eiza Gonzalez in her most rewarding role to date) and wounded cop (Jackson White) onboard after the robbery goes sideways are so nutty that it's shocking that the lawyers at Universal and Los Angeles city government actually granted permission for them to be done. There's so much rapid switching between vantage points and camera angles that the line between drones, handheld and dolly shots quickly gets blurred. The confined setting paired with the life-or-death scenarios that are happening inside and outside creates a combustible human dynamic where fear, absurdity, and sadness are the only things that can thrive.
When a director that is such a natural at staging action that is brimming with immediacy and panache is paired with a cast that embraces working in such a freewheelingly wild environment, a feeling that is as close to spontaneity as a scripted films can possibly get develops and that undercurrent of organic looseness makes Ambulance an exhilaratingly rebellious outlier at a time where blockbusters are becoming more and more buttoned up.
Grade: A-
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