Ambulance

Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen, Eiza Gonzalez, Garrett Dillahunt, Keir O'Donnell, Jackson White

Director: Michael Bay

War veteran Will Sharp (Abdul-Mateen) needs money and he needs it fast. His insurance company has denied coverage for an experimental cancer surgery for his wife. Enter his adoptive brother Danny (Gyllenhaal), who needs Will's help robbing a bank later that day. Seeing no other option, Will agrees to help. When things go awry, Will and Danny are forced to hijack an ambulance with paramedic Cam (Gonzalez) and injured cop Zack (White) inside. Will and Danny soon find themselves in a race across Los Angeles with the LAPD, led by the dogged Captain Monroe (Dillahunt), hot on their heels. The only things keeping them alive are Zack, who clings to life and Cam who is trying to save him while figuring out a way for them to escape the nightmare they have found themselves in.

Michael Bay is an acquired taste, with his bombastic in your face style (which has been cleverly titled "Bayhem"). Whether an asteroid is about to destroy earth in Armageddon or gigantic robots are destroying cities in the Transformers series, you know what you are in for when you watch one of his films.

Once the movie gets going for the bank robbery, the Bayhem is on full display with dizzying drone shots and bone crunching violence. This is a wild movie and was a ride I was greatly enjoying until the third act took a hard swing into nonsensical and unearned character moments. As good as the leads are, Will is a very frustrating character because he is set up as a man who doesn't want to hurt his family or leave them and yet every decision he makes is the antithesis to this. He is given several chances to leave Danny to take the fall for what happened and he doesn't take it. He also put himself in harm's way every chance he gets. It's just maddening. Bay also falls back into his problematic habit of using L.A. Latino gangs as a villain at one point.

Bay has a great cast at his disposal and you can't do much better than having Gyllenhaal and Abdul-Mateen as your leads. Their chemistry is good for the most part but I ended up having a hard time buying them as adopted brothers. It’s a credit to them both that for the most part you are still rooting for them despite the multitude of bad decisions their characters make. The real standout of the film is Eiza Gonzalez. Cam is tough and actually acts pretty believably in the situation. She gets one of the more wild scenes in the film where she has to perform surgery in a moving ambulance as she Facetimes three other doctors who talk her though it. It’s a credit to her that she makes it as believable as she does. She also is the only character who has a believable arc by the end of the movie.

The movie is a fun ride, which should come as no surprise to those who know Bay's filmography. Heck I'd even go out on a limb and say this is the best thing he has made in a long time. However, the frustrating and counterintuitive ways the characters act keep this from coming in higher for me.I

Grade: C+