Direction: Michael Bay
Country: USA
Ambulance, an American remake of the 2005 Danish film of the same name, has director Michael Bay at the helm, who adopts the same artificial restlessness of his other actioners such as The Rock (1996), Armageddon (1998), and Transformers (2007). It’s all cooked with stale ingredients, and the film fails to convince. This low-grade heist movie exhibits an apparent yet constant verve that makes us tired, especially if we consider that the intended twists are devoid of brilliance.
The eruptive yet unproductive dialogue and oft-repeated strain are maintained throughout, mostly involving the three protagonists: Danny Sharp (Jake Gyllenhaal), an experienced bank robber; his adoptive brother Will (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), who joins him in a desperate attempt to collect the amount needed for his wife's surgery; and Camille Thompson (Eiza González), a coldly efficient paramedic made hostage by the other two in a highjacked emergency ambulance.
Playing with a fast editing, the film follows this car racing through the streets of L.A. with the SIS and the FBI right on its heels. All the floodgates to escape them revealed problems, and the director never backed down from any melodramatic string. Any possibility to create suspense became thwarted by a series of unsavory scenes delivered at nauseating breakneck speed. It’s just about pulling the wool over your eyes.
This is a very conventional cat-and-mouse thriller that doesn't go anywhere. Now and then, the mischievous eloquence of its characters can still feed a few smiles among the long list of regrets, but this Ambulance quickly got its engine flooded and conked out. You'd have to tie me to a chair to make me see it again.
