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Movie Review: Ambulance

Mike Tyrkus

The new action film (at least it is supposed to be) from Michael Bay, simply titled Ambulance, unfortunately turns out to be a long, boring slog of a ride instead of the edge-of-your-seat thriller it was more than likely intended to be.  

Times have gotten hard for veteran Will Sharp (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II). He cannot cover his mounting family medical bills and looks to the one person he believes can help him out – his adoptive brother Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal). Danny’s help comes in the form of the largest bank robbery in the history of Los Angeles, which leaves Will wondering whether he’s made the correct decision. 

During the heist, things go from bad to worse as Danny and Will must flee the scene of the crime in an ambulance transporting a cop wounded during the robbery. Now, with the officer and an EMT named Cam (Eiza González) in tow, the brothers must find a way to elude the city-wide manhunt underway to apprehend them. 

Although director Michael Bay has delivered his fair share of effective action vehicles, Ambulance is far from one of them. Part of this falls on Bay’s frenetic camera work and quick cutting that, instead of creating a series of exhilarating thrilling chase sequences merely settles for disguising a mediocre action film with flashing lights and even more obnoxious sound effects.  

There is an interesting story about two disparate siblings somewhere within the script by Chris Fedak, it is just not at work in this film. Adapted from the Danish film Ambulancen (2005), directed by Laurits Munch-Petersen and Lars Andreas Pedersen, there is definitely something lost in the translation as nothing of consequence ever really seems to be at stake throughout the film. There are rarely any other cars on the road other than the ambulance and the police vehicles in pursuit and that makes the weight of the chase much lighter than in should, or could, have been. 

Jake Gyllenhaal in “Ambulance.” Photo by Andrew Cooper/Universal Pictures – © 2021 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.

As the ostensible hero of the film, Will is more of literal passenger who simply reacts to events occurring around him rather than becoming the actual paladin of the story. While he is left to flap in the wind and serve as the sympathetic character for the audience, his brother is played by Gyllenhaal as an over-the-top psychopath that doesn’t seem to belong in this movie for any real purpose at all, other than to make Will seem reasonable and level-headed. 

Long guilty of producing spectacle rather than anything tangible, Bay doesn’t disappoint of his previous efforts by delivering a loud, obnoxious, and tediously mundane action piece in Ambulance that almost demands that the viewer take in the original Danish film if only to push Bay’s vision of it out of mind.

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Mike Tyrkus

Editor in Chief at CinemaNerdz.com
An independent filmmaker, co-writer and director of over a dozen short films, the Editor in Chief of CinemaNerdz.com has spent much of the last three decades as a writer and editor specializing in biographical and critical reference sources in literature and the cinema, beginning in February 1991 reviewing films for his college newspaper. He was a member of the Detroit Film Critics Society, as well as the group's webmaster and one-time President for over a decade until the group ceased to exist. His contributions to film criticism can be found in Magill's Cinema Annual, VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever (of which he was the editor for nearly a decade until it too ceased to exist), the International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, and the St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia (on which he collaborated with editor Andrew Sarris). He has also appeared on the television program Critic LEE Speaking alongside Lee Thomas of FOX2 and Adam Graham, of The Detroit News. He currently lives in the Detroit area with his wife and their dogs.

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