Rent Ambulance on Amazon Video (paid link)
Written by: Chris Fedak (screenplay by), Laurits Munch-Petersen (based on the film "Ambulancen" written by), and
Lars Andreas Pedersen
Directed by: Michael Bay
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Eiza González, Garret Dillahunt
Rated: R
Watch the trailer
Plot
Needing money to cover his wife's medical bills, a decorated veteran teams up with his adoptive career criminal brother to steal $32 million from a Los Angeles bank. When their getaway goes spectacularly wrong, they end up stealing an ambulance.
Verdict
It's a Michael Bay movie, so there are plenty of crashes and a few explosions. Everything in this movie is in service to the action whether or not it's logical. This could be a really nice action movie if it fine tuned and shortened the script. This goes a bit long as there are only so many ways to crash a car. At a certain point the action is a bit mindless. It's entertaining and the action remains high adrenaline for basically the whole movie, but the movie is hollow as the plot is an excuse for a prolonged car chase.
It depends.
Review
This is an American remake of the 2005 Danish film of the same name. During the 2020 pandemic, Bay wanted a movie he could start and complete filming in a relatively short amount of time. He didn't read or watch the original as he wanted this to be his own take.
Gyllenhaal always provides great performances from his last movie The Guilty to one of his earliest roles Donnie Darko, and the renowned Brokeback Mountain. I'm going to watch nearly anything he's in. He's just that good.
Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Will (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) are brothers it seems just so the movie can make a joke about how they don't look alike. We get a couple artistic flashbacks to them as kids, but it doesn't add anything.
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| Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Jake Gyllenhaal play Will, Danny |
This movie is a prolonged car chase and everything that precedes that is designed to get us to the action. Will is a veteran dealing with healthcare bureaucracy just so we will quickly sympathize with him. He's a vet that risked his life but getting nothing in return. This is an impetus for many movies. In dire need of money he goes to his brother Danny hoping for a loan.
Danny just happens to be setting up one of the biggest heists Los Angeles has ever seen, an impossibly large heist worth thirty-two million. Talk about timing. Will doesn't want to join, but the plot needs to get moving so he agrees. It's at this point that I question how well planned Danny's heist is. Will knows nothing about this heist and apparently doesn't need any preparation. If I was one of the other crew members I would be curious how this affects my cut. I also don't understand Danny's job which I assume is a front. Why does he keeps personal mementos at work other than to show Will just in case he comes in?
This provides just enough story to get to the action. I have no problem with that as it gives this some amount of foundation but we get a lot of characters that you know will converge at this heist. There's Cam (Eiza González), an EMT that's one of the best ever. There's also a cop that likes a bank teller. These contrivances just make it feel scripted.
There doesn't seem to be a plan to this heist as Danny didn't expect to encounter any resistance at all. Things go bad which isn't a surprise. I have to wonder if there is a glass factory nearby. There are a surprising number of men flying through glass panes even when on the sidewalk.
There are many examples that provide an example as to the overall refinement of the script. Danny and Will run down a corridor, open a gate, see cops and run back into the corridor after slamming the gate. We then see a cop run to the gate, and he can't open it due to a padlock. The gate was never locked. It's a shortcut and this movie uses too many of them when it isn't necessary. There are a lot of car crashes and many of them are just car fodder. No human driver would behave like that, but we 'need' them to for crazy crashes. There's also quite a few drone shots in the beginning. I don't know if it's because a lot of this movie occurs in an ambulance and Bay wanted some freedom in camera movements while he could, but they don't add much to the movie.
By the very title of the movie, we know an ambulance is coming. That's when this heist movie becomes a car chase. How much of this movie will occur in an ambulance? The answer is quite a bit, but this movie does a great job of keeping this interesting. It's certainly too long, but this keeps getting wilder from what's going on in the ambulance to the diversions Danny calls in from friends. Half way in I wondered if this movie could continue to raise the excitement level. It can. Part of that is introducing yet another character that is contrived.
This movie interjects comedy frequently, but it's misplaced. It always is a distraction from the action, and the action is the only reason this movie exists. The comedy only makes a long movie even longer.
For as smart as we're told Danny is, we never see him capitalize on that knowledge. He's supposed to know how cops would react, but his plan seems only to be run away. This ties back to the lack of a plan, but I'm not sure this movie overall had much of a plan. I think the basis for the movie was, 'let's make an awesome chase.' The movie does that, but I wish it could refine the numerous improbable moments which would improve the story. This also needs to be shorter, the focus is often scattered with so many characters.
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