Directed by: Michael Bay
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Eiza Gonzalez, Garrett Hedlund, Keir O'Donnell, A Martinez
Ambulance is a long slog through a plot which stops making sense at about the thirty-minute mark. Plots with holes in them aren't necessarily fatal and Ambulance could've been escapist fun, but instead we get a movie full of explosions, chases, crashes, gunfire, and otherwise mindless sequences which drag it out to an interminable length. A better Michael Bay film, such as The Rock, gives us a silly plot which nonetheless makes us care. In Ambulance, we long stopped caring about anything except when the movie will end.
The movie begins with Afghanistan War veteran Will Sharp (Abdul-Mateen II) fruitlessly trying to deal with an uncaring insurance company over lack of coverage for an experimental procedure which might help her treat her cancer. The desperate Will contacts his estranged brother, criminal mastermind Danny (Gyllenhaal) on the very day Danny is about to execute a bank heist in downtown Los Angeles. Wouldn't you know it? Danny is short a driver and Will is coerced into driving the getaway vehicle. It isn't exactly awesome planning to be short a getaway driver on the morning of the heist, but sometimes it's better to be lucky than good. What if Will hadn't shown up? Danny would've been in a bind and forced to postpone.
The robbery itself doesn't go as planned either. A cop with a crush on the teller stops by to ask out the teller, who along with the rest of the staff is in the process of being held up. Will's truck stalls out around the corner from the bank, causing the cop's partner to help fix it, not knowing of course the truck is meant as a getaway vehicle. Things go ka-blooey, and soon an ambulance with a cynical, jaded EMT (Gonzalez) finds itself in the garage basement with a shot cop on board (yes, the one who asked out the teller) which Will and Danny soon hijack and lead the LAPD and FBI on a chase so lengthy and protracted that you wonder when the ambulance will run out of gas.
Ambulance runs out of gas long before the ambulance in the movie does. The EMT has to perform emergency surgery on the cop before he bleeds to death via a zoom call with her ex-boyfriend and two other prominent surgeons who talk her through the procedure. A former friend of Danny's, FBI agent Anson Clark (O'Donnell) and eccentric police captain Monroe (Hedlund) are trying to talk Danny into surrendering without further loss of life or damage, but soon an entire subplot involving diversions created by Danny's crime associates also causes more deaths and additional running time.
Bay's film is a loud assault on the senses which isn't exciting or even sweeps us up in the moment. Once everything is over, there is an extended epilogue in which the EMT learns to be caring instead of jaded and everyone is trying to convince authorities that Will is, what, a good guy at heart who should be given a break even though he was involved in a theft, kidnapping, and eventually murder and mayhem. Give us a break.
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