He goes to see his rich criminal brother Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal, Nightcrawler) hoping for a loan. Out-of-work US Marine veteran Will Sharp (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, The Matrix Resurrections) needs a quarter-million dollars fast so he can pay for a life-saving experimental surgery for his wife, Amy (Moses Ingram, The Tragedy of Macbeth).
Cut to the Chase and Then Back to the Chase and Back to the Chase Again Bay’s latest, Ambulance, falls into the latter category it’s a breathless, brainless twisted metal thrill ride that’s simple but never boring. At its best, it can give you the rush you get from seeing a really cool movie trailer and sustain it for two-plus hours. At its worst, this can rob a film of any sense of dynamics - nothing pops, because everything’s as visually loud as possible. Bay is famous for trying to make every shot of his movie as epic as possible, whether it depicts a car crash, a phone call, or a parent rocking a baby. You know his deal, right? He’s the maximalist music video director-turned-action cinema auteur responsible for a handful of canonized action flicks, one good Transformers movie, four unwatchable Transformers movies, one cult classic, and two thrillers about troops that I haven’t seen and you probably haven’t seen either.
