Director and producer Michael Bay displays his penchant for high-octane big-budget films drawn from a far more modestly made and much shorter 2005 Danish film of the same name.
Ambulance stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Yaha Abdul-Mateen in what essentially takes place over a day in the bustling City of Angles.
Chris Fedak’s script could be the B-movie variant of the Denzel Washington-starrer John Q that stokes the director’s uninhabited craftsmanship, especially when it comes to non-stop, incendiary action as his fandom will feel the need for speed and firepower.
Abdul-Mateen’s will ( decorated Afghanistan War Marine veteran) has to turn to his ne’er-do-well Mexican mafia connected adopted brother Danny (Gyllenhaal of Nightcrawler) when his ailing wife is due for a costly special medical procedure.
You might think of Michael Mann’s more sensibly savvy Heat when crooks intent on liquidating a bank of $32 million fall into a troubling predicament with quite the sonorous gunfight.
A wounded cop, Zach (Jackson White), is part of the escape of the titular vehicle from the violent scene with a hostage including the resourceful paramedic Cam (Eliza Gonzalez). A FaceTime conference with her golfing ex aids in an anesthetic-free splenectomy. Just a part of the freneticism that demands that any logic be left far from the darkened room preferably on a giant screen with the sound system tuned up.
Nostalgia for the white Bronco goes to show Bay in a narcissistic cinematic rave that summons his earlier films which starred the likes of Will Smith and Nicolas Cage. The gratuitous hackneyed flavorings exon to the dialogue with Gyllenhaal really amped up to the jugular almost the lunatic stand-in-for the intense auteur. Ambulance runs on the no-holds barred track like a hugely successful franchise for this studio starring Vin Diesel that’s a prolonged urban pursuit for our age.