Love or hate him, Michael Bay knows how to make a movie. We’ll trash the Transformers movies, Pearl Harbor or even The Island, but on the other hand, we’ll praise films like The Rock, Armageddon, Bad Boys or even one of his more recent films 13 Hours. Whether we like it or not, Michael Bay has a lot more wins on his hands than some would want to admit. The Transformers movies fall into their own seperate category of horrible, which probably where the name “Michael Bay” is so controversial. Michael Bay is a competent director when he’s in his element and with the right type of movie. The reason he stayed on the Transformers movies for so long is that it kept printing Paramount gobs of money. We’ve seen him slowly distance himself away from that franchise and serve more as a producer than anything else. It’s fun to trash on Michael Bay and how much people loved to hate Michael Bay because even if he wasn’t a director for a movie he was still involved in the making of, they still would have put his name on every billboard or trailer. I mean, just look at the recent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies.
With his most recent action flicks in 13 Hours and in Netflix’s 6 Underground, it looked that Michael Bay was going back to his roots by making an action film, which is what he’s really good at. He’ll work with an ensemble, with the exception of big name talents and Bay will go from there. Ambulance, a brand new action movie starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and Eiza González makes you wish we got this instead of the lousy Transformers movies we got from him. It’s by far his best movie in years and what better way to have a Michael Bay movie authentically feel like a Michael Bay movie. 360 camera shots, sunsets, high octane and visceral action, more sunsets and glorious saturation. Oh, and lots of terrific and exciting drone shots of spectacular shootouts and heart pounding car chase sequences.
The premise for Ambulance is rather simple, as are most action movies made by Michael Bay. Two adoptive brothers, Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal) and William (Yahya Abdul-Mateen), both reside in the city of Los Angeles. William is in desperate need for some money for his wife’s surgery, so he reaches out to Danny for some support. Danny helps him by offering a job to rob a bank with $32 million stowed away. While it’s not the way William wanted things to go, he accepts the job anyways. The bank heist takes a drastic turn and leaves William and Danny with no options but to hijack an ambulance with a wounded cop inside and an EMT worker named Cam (Eiza González). With the entire city chasing these two down, Danny and William have to figure how to stay alive and keep the hostages safe as well.
When it comes to character work, that’s never really been something that one would expect in any Michael Bay movie, but surprisingly there’s a good amount of it in Ambulance with the relationship between William and Danny and especially William and Cam. Jake Gyllehaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen have a spirited and a connective bond that elevates their performances and character work that’s at hand. Gyllenhaal plays a well written, feasible and electrifying type of character in a way that almost makes him a villain. We know Gyllehaal is terrific at playing these types of characters, especially how he did in Nightcrawler, and this performance of his is literally one of his best. Yahya Abdul-Mateen is by far one of the most underrated charismatic actors that oozes all of that in this movie. He’s the type of leading man that you instantly side with and root for all the way through and while there’s heart and frustration with his relationship with Danny, his dynamic with Eiza González is phenomenal. Eiza González is someone who needs to be put in more projects because she can go toe to toe with actors like a Jake Gyllehaal and carry scenes on her own completely.
Ambulance is basically Michael Bay operating making his own versions of Speed, Heat and Mad Max Fury Road. It’s Bay playing around in his own sandbox and adding more of his textures to any movie he’s made before. The street shootouts pack a punch right into your gut like a bullet itself. The action is unhinged, intense and completely out of control for the entire runtime, but it’s really the car chase sequence that’s really the aspect that grabs hold of you the second it starts. It’s basically Michael Bay taking the wheel and letting him take control. He shoots the action very well and what made things even better was the usage of several drone shots that are stunningly utilized that only enhance each sequence. It’s not the best action movie ever made, but it certainly might be one of the best crafted ones in the genre.
One of Michael Bay’s frequent collaborators was composer Steve Jablonsky, but Bay teams up with Lorne Balfe once again (who previously composed the music for 6 Underground), and really not only knew to make the action hits hard but also its music. Its heart pounding, bombastic and incredibly powerful. If Bay and Balfe want to continue working together then let’s continue to make it happen.
These are the movies that Michael Bay needs to continue making. He doesn’t need to work with budgets that cost over $175 million just to produce. The budget for Ambulance is said to be $40 million and even with a smaller budget, he can still deliver his signature all over this movie. He can work well with big talent and give them a lot to play with and despite what people say, the rumors of working on a Michael Bay set must be fun.
My grade for Ambulance: A-
Zane's take at the Cinema's 