Ambulance Movie Review: Unevenly paced typical Michael Bay actioner

A still from `Ambulance`

Ambulance
Dir: Michael Bay
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Eiza González, Garret Dillahunt
Rating: 2.5/5

A remake of a 2005 Danish film, this Michael Bay-directed actioner goes over the top, exaggerating a medical emergency while trying to pull off a prolonged cop-criminal chase that is rather bloated out of proportion. There's no reasoning with such contrived excess.

There's not much to the script. Decorated veteran Will Sharp (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), desperate for money to cover his wife's medical bills after insurance companies decline his request, asks for help from his adoptive brother Danny(Jake Gyllenhaal), a career criminal, who Sharp's wife would rather not have him associate with. True to form, Danny instead, offers him a chance to score a chunk out of the biggest bank heist ($32 million) in Los Angeles history. Sharp reluctantly falls into line and the rest is a viscerally pumped-up hijack thriller amounting to cops and robbers chasing all over Los Angeles territory.

Jake Gyllenhaal appears to be channeling ‘crazy' after his high-strung excitable turn as supervillain Mysterio in "Spider-Man: Far from Home." But his performance seems rather mechanically maniacal. His Danny Sharp here is depicted as a scary, crazy guy who simply snaps as things do not go his way on that particular day. Unfortunately, his subsequent unraveling doesn't come off as convincing enough.

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II lends William Sharp both vulnerability and brawn. As a man driven to crime by sheer desperation he is far more acute and able enough to garner some empathy. Eiza Gonzalez's fearless EMT Cam is a heroic, attention-getting turn and Gonzalez does well to keep the audience invested in her well-being.

Bay's narrative doesn't do much for a thrill-expecting audience. It's rather chaotic with the hijacked ambulance used as the getaway vehicle scattering fruits, flowers, clothes, garbage, passers-by, and everything else on its route to an escapist's fantasy. The camerawork is both dizzying and ditzy, editing is choppy and the runtime of 136 mins is way too overlong to be exciting. The medical absurdities in the name of emergency care feel rather ridiculous. There's nothing original about this propulsive scaled-up effort and its entertainment value is rather suspect.