FILM REVIEW

ambulance

Words Sean Stillmaker

There are few filmmakers who’s very name attached acts as both a noun and a descriptive adjective of the film. Michael Bay is one of those directors, and Ambulance is his latest film.

The story’s about two brothers who botch a bank robbery, attempt their getaway with hostages in a stolen ambulance and try to thwart police in a high-speed pursuit. This may sound familiar because it’s based off the 2005 low-budget Danish indie Ambulancen.

To Americanize this update, Bay goes big setting it in Los Angeles, having one of the brothers as a military veteran and delivering a full display of his signature style: explosive mayhem, macho testosterone, brazen product placement and absurd reality distortion.

There is an art to delivering this kind of signature and it’s quite refreshing to see it as a stand alone movie with regular people rather than some entry in a superhero franchise, or in Bay’s past, one of his five Transformers films.

Leading off Ambulance is Jake Gyllenhaal as Danny and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as his adoptive brother Will.

Danny grew up to be a criminal, having accomplished 38 bank robberies by this time, whereas Will is a decorated veteran having completed tours in Afghanistan. Bountiful of emotions, it’s unfortunate this wayward dynamic of life choices and impact between brothers is not substantially explored.

For Will consistent gainful employment is a struggle as well as dealing with the bureaucratic system of US Veteran Affairs. His wife is a cancer patient that requires immediate surgery, but because it’s classified as experimental, Will’s medical benefits will not cover the $230,000 bill.

With no other option, he turns to his estranged brother Danny for help looking for a loan, which Danny would give him, but unfortunately all of his funds are tied up in his heist of the century – a $32 million bank robbery that is ready to go as they meet. So the respectable good-hearted Will decides to join his criminally charismatic brother Danny so he can provide for his family.

Danny’s plight as a victim from Veteran Affairs is a realistic catalyst, which starts the film in an emotional heartbreaking moment. Unfortunately, further probing into this trauma or the actual systematic neglect of veterans is abandoned in the script. Due note, this is a real problem where veteran’s disability rating is being arbitrarily altered leaving them with a reduction of 20 to 40 per cent in benefits.

Mr. Bay has always been a propagandist champion of the American military industrial complex, but the Covid-19 pandemic has given way to a new kind of war where the frontline is the medical service.

Bay’s affinity for heroism clearly marks the heart and true protagonist of the film as paramedic Camille “Cam” Thompson played Eiza González. Cam is the paramedic in the ambulance taken hostage alongside her patient, a cop who was shot during the robbery.

Cam is the fully three-dimensional character in the film. She wanted to be a doctor, but drug abuse fueled her drop out. This checkered history relegates her to working for a private ambulance service, which is over-worked, under-staffed and under-paid. She now dedicates herself to the job, known to keep anyone alive for 20 minutes, but leaves little for personal relationships outside of work.

Over Bay’s 15 feature films, they’ve been macho male dominated (with applause as substantial roles both in front and behind the camera were given to people of color). But he’s now increased his inclusivity rating with the character of Cam, as women throughout his films (and many churned out by Hollywood for that matter), are either the hollow love interest or plot device to prop up men.

The script for Ambulance, written by Chris Fedak, has been gestating for over five years, but the fall of 2020 gave way to perfect timing as a vehicle for Bay. It fit with his desire for a quick shoot, staying local to LA and scaled back in scope so as not to be burdened by covid restrictions.

The stripped back essence of Ambulance is definitely a refreshing back to basics for Bay, and it certainly is his most grounded film. To illustrate consider the premise of Bay’s fictional films (those not based on true events or of the Transformer’s franchise): Black man inherits generational wealth from trust fund to become a street cop (Bad Boys), a 60-year-old convict and lab rat battle Marines (The Rock), oil roughnecks become astronauts to save Earth (Armageddon), replicants discover they’re clones and fight to live (The Island), tech billionaire erases himself to start charity deploying global mercenaries (6 Underground).

And so to the true star of the film, Bay, he does not disappoint delivering a thrilling high-speed pursuit with all his characteristic carnage. Always a stellar visualist, a new tool applied is the falling camera.

Reminiscent of the slow and steady shot in Pearl Harbor as the camera attaches itself to a falling bomb, Bay turned to aerial drone specialists LightCraft to capture his vision of randomly dropping the camera from the sky.

Throughout the film, the camera glides in the air and randomly plummets at full speed to catch the action. It’s a shock of adrenaline that matches the narrative, while conjuring the randomness fate bestows upon the patients that pile into an ambulance or the violent hostilities victimizing innocent bystanders.

To further accentuate Bay’s star, he breaks the fourth wall with characters quoting his film The Rock and his dog, Nitro, a 200-pound mastiff makes a hilarious cameo being charioted around in a five-speed Fiat. This certainly isn’t even the most outlandish element in the movie, I chalk that up to Birkenstocks.

The obvious outlandishness though is the entire concept of hours-long, high speed police pursuits. That just does not happen, but we know we’re in a movie. To further reality-check, in today’s financial realm, bank robberies are done by keyboard rather than gun point. However, official FBI crime statistics do indicate a trade still active: there were 2,405 US bank robberies in 2019, with 6 instances involving hostages, and the most robberies occurring in California (273); the pandemic obviously impacted 2020 as there were only 1,500 bank robberies nationwide.

With bank robberies, it’s the FBI who take command of the incident. For some modern nuance in characters, the FBI agent dispatched to the situation is gay – we first meet him in a couple’s counseling session, which he must abruptly exit for the emergency. However, there’s not much further probing into how this character’s sexual orientation impacted his career, which would be ripe in dialogue and development.

All the actors inside Ambulance deliver the intensity to match the thrill ride, but there is only so much one can do with the script they’re given. Bay’s masterful at pulling emotional delivery from actors, which is why he’s worked with a plethora of marquee talent since erupting out of commercials and music videos with his 1995 feature debut Bad Boys.

But Bay can only do with as much as he’s given to work with, and thus it’s the script that has fallen short. All the pieces for great character development and a dialogue on the systematic failings these characters encountered through their sacrifices are there, but instead we’re given a surface level treatment.

The next biggest hurdle is the film’s 2-hour and 13-minute length. This could have been succinctly delivered in 90-minutes. One of the best ways to get there would be completely removing the unnecessary sub-plot involving Latino gangsters. Not only does it add little to the story, it just reinforces offensive stereotypes.

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