Bay’s latest crime thriller Ambulance isn’t one of his films I can say I enjoyed. I was impressed by the camera works at first but Michael Bay seems to be enjoying them far too much that it’s beginning to feel like a roller coaster ride: nauseating.
It was interesting to see Michael Bay do movies outside the Transformers franchise. Pearl Harbor and Armageddon were guilty pleasures and they gave a satisfying enough amount of explosions, I mean drama.
But Jake Gyllenhaal gives an impressive performance here. It’s nothing new to him but his acting drives the film, and his acting drives the story. Bay either let Gyllenhaal act or let the cameras do the work. It’s frustrating to watch at times.
I do feel that the pitch for the story is, “what if you get to perform surgery on a moving ambulance with a gun pointed at your head by a bank robber?” I felt that the production was most invested in that sequence. It was crazy to pull it off but they did. But it wasn’t as impactful as it sounds on paper.
Ambulance is crazy. You might enjoy it for the tension and action sequences, but you might not because of its over-the-top shots and mediocre story. Michael Bay is a talented filmmaker but this one, despite its excellent cast, is far from his decent works.