Ambulance (2022)

I am surprised that I ever thought that Michael Bay would deliver something other than his usual garbage with Ambulance, his newest film starring Jake Gyllenhaal as the leader of the worst bank robbers in movie history. Usually the smart ones have a believable escape plan rather than this radom escape in a sudden hijacked ambulance. I usually like Jake and he has a lifetime pass from me for Donnie Darko but this one was a chore to watch with his manic performance perfectly in synch with Michael Bay's movie making style.

I knew the film would be filled with crashes. car chases and made up entirely of scenes that were no more than 3 seconds long. I even counted the speed of the edits to keep my brain from exploding. Everything is siren noise and chaos and after and hour of that garbage, I noticed I had another hour of the same to go. If I was an epileptic I would be in full 'incident' mode about now.

For some reason a couple of bank robbers can keep from the cops from finding them in a city like L.A. which takes pride in their ability to track bad guys by helicopter. Every car then sent after the robbers, crashes or smashes into other things that break and make noise. And all this happens when everyone makes witty uninteresting banter that relates to nothing that is happening on screen. How are our two stepbrother 'heroes' ever going to escape this predicament they have found themselves in. With cops on their first day of work apparently, Jake stayed free for HOURS after shooting it out in a bank and on the streets killing many cops and other innocents.

It's just more noise. Opps, look, they hit an outdoor fruit market. Wow. So original. I hope a playschool full of toddlers is next. More cops are chasing this ambulance than chased after OJ. Oh and a cop is dying in the back of the ambulance and being cared for by a cute paramedic - just like things would go in real life.

Damn, this editing is killing me. The trailer is cut JUST like the movie. That quick and annoying in service of a plot that makes NO SENSE for either the bank robber's story or the police sides' story. For a movie that never stops moving, it is dull and redundant with the same scene repeated every two minutes. I am glad it did poorly this opening weekend.

Nothing is believable here and that usually makes things fun but this one is only a chore to watch. For  a movie that moves too fast it's most terrible sin is that it is boring. The resolution is garbage and a waste of the 2 hours I put into finishing this movie until the end. Then I just wished for death.

This did well on Rotten Tomatoes (74%) but it is much less the sum of it's parts which look put together by someone without any movie making experience. After all these years, Bay hasn't learned a damn thing about entertaining an audience.