Ambulance Review

Director Michael Bay is back with Ambulance, his first theatrical-wide release since 2017's Transformers: The Last Knight, and this time, he's learned how to use a drone. Ambulance follows Will Sharp (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) a veteran desperate for funds to pay for a rare, experimental life-saving surgery that his wife needs. He asks his estranged adoptive brother Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal) for help, who tells him he can have all the money he needs...so long as he helps him rob a bank. Due to unforeseen circumstances, the job goes wrong and the two find themselves hijacking an ambulance as their getaway vehicle with a paramedic (Eiza González) inside.

After the initial heist and the setup that preceded it, Ambulance is essentially: "Car Chase: The Movie." Bay gets a whole lot of mileage (pun intended) out of a very simple concept, but at times it does feel like the movie is a bit spread thin. A tighter edit would have prevented some of the redundancies that drag down the second half of the film. What starts as a pretty solid action thriller, eventually evolves into a film that revels in its absurdities. While that's not completely a bad thing, it's definitely going to end up being a movie that's loved because of how outrageous it is, rather than the film being high quality itself.

While Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Eiza González are both fine here, I'm convinced this movie would not work at all without Jake Gyllenhaal's off-the-wall, scenery-chewing performance. He's outrageous from start to finish and without a doubt one of the most entertaining aspects of the film. A good car chase is all fine and good, but it helps when you have stakes involved to heighten the tension. Even though he's playing a villain type here, you kinda can't help but root for him.

Ambulance is an overly long piece of entertaining action fluff that unfortunately feels all too rare these days in a world of neverending cape flicks. It's a fun enough romp, but not anything special. Yet somehow that just might be enough these days because it still feels somewhat refreshing.

RATING: 7/10