‘Ambulance’ Review: Jake Gyllenhaal in Michael Bay’s ’90s-Retro Excessive ‘Die Hard’ on an EMS Van
variety.comOwen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticAt a time of strife, division, anxiety, and war, you might think the moment would be right for a nostalgic escape to the retro-excessive trash-movie mystique of the ’90s — an age when action thrillers were big, loud, decadent, “rebellious” and, as often as not, ripped off from “Die Hard.” “Ambulance,” however, could make you rethink that impulse.
It’s directed by Michael Bay, who over the years has trafficked in a great many varieties of excess: massively scaled kiddie gizmo excess (the “Transformers” films), apocalyptic sci-fi excess (“Armageddon”), fake-authentic historical excess (“Pearl Harbor”), and good old buddy-movie excess (“The Rock” and “Bad Boys”). “Ambulance,” a propulsively violent and in-your-face chase thriller, stakes out a genre we might simply call ’90s excess.
Set during one long day in Los Angeles, it’s the tale of a bank robbery gone spectacularly wrong. And what it all comes down to is this: Following a street showdown that tries to out-machine-gun clatter the one in Michael Mann’s “Heat,” two of the robbers hijack an ambulance, with a paramedic and a wounded cop aboard, and they then race through the streets of L.A.
pursued by an army of squad cars, police choppers, and news teams. It’s “Speed” crossed with the O.J. Bronco chase crossed with “Die Hard” on an EMS van, and it’s all served up in a pedal-to-the-metal mode of overwrought hyper intensity one could describe as Bay to the Max.In “Ambulance,” there’s no such thing as an establishing shot of a vehicle cruising along a freeway that isn’t immediately followed by an off-angle, camera-whooshing-through-the-air operatic heightening of that shot.
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