In "Ambulance," director Michael Bay's chaotic, frenetic daytime travelogue of Los Angeles, the viewer is constantly reminded of other, better movies. There's a shootout in the streets following a bank heist, like in "Heat." There's a chase through the L.A. River basin, like in "T2." The majority of the movie takes place on board a moving vehicle as it barrels down L.A.'s freeways, like in "Speed." Even its characters can't stop talking about other Bay films, making conversational references to "The Rock" and "Bad Boys."
"Ambulance" best exists as an homage to the movies that came before it, because it doesn't carve out any legacy for itself. This sloppily plotted action thriller forgets to give the audience any rooting interest in its characters, and then sloooowly drags to its drawn out finish. For a movie about a speeding truck, by the end it feels like it's stuck in traffic.
"Candyman's" Yahya Abdul-Mateen II stars as Will Sharp, an ex-Marine (if you miss the first reference to his service, don't worry, there's three dozen more on the way) struggling to find his place after returning home from the war. He needs $231,000 to pay for an experimental treatment for his wife, and he reaches out to his adoptive brother Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal), who has no problem lending him the cash, if Will will join him on a $32 million bank heist that he just happens to be leaving for right now, at this very second. C'mon man, in or out? Time's a wastin'!
Wouldn't Danny have all the details of this high risk holdup already worked out? As confident as he is — "we do this in our sleep," he brags — the heist seems to have no real plan at all, more a function of lazy screenwriting than it is Danny's bank robbing prowess, which we're told has been passed down to him from he and Will's legendary bank robbing father.
Either way, the job ends up going predictably sideways, Will shoots a cop, and then Will and Danny spend the rest of the day driving around L.A. in a lifted ambulance, trying to form a plan, while being chased by half of the LAPD and listening to Christopher Cross' "Sailing" in a futile attempt at ironic humor.
Meanwhile in the back of the truck, paramedic Cam Thompson (Eiza Gonzalez) — she's not just any paramedic, she's "the best paramedic in town!" — is working to save the life of the wounded officer (Jackson White) at at one point has to perform surgery on him at 60 mph while to surgeons help her out via FaceTime. And the cops are working to stop the out-of-control ambulance, even though their plan is no better or more apparent than that of the bad guys.
And they are bad guys, there's no question, so who is the audience meant to be pulling for, again? Director Bay, a masterful visual stylist whose films are typically dumbed down to their lowest common denominator (this one's no different), has all sorts of fancy camera techniques he employs, including whooshing shots that look as though his lens was affixed to the top of a paper airplane. But there are no actual characters in the movie, just people with one or two traits attached to them, who have no sense of a life lived outside of the moments they're featured on camera. (You get the sense that they're only propped up when they're being seen, the opposite of Andy's dolls in "Toy Story.") At least L.A. looks resplendent, bathed in sunshine and kissed by the gods, but then you've seen all these spots before. You're better off with a map to the stars.
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'AMBULANCE'
Grade: C-
MPAA rating: R (for intense violence, bloody images and language throughout)
Running time: 2:16
Where to watch: In theaters Friday
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