Michael Bay has directed some big blockbuster movies in his career, but in 2022 he landed his biggest box office flop of all time with the Jake Gyllenhaal vehicle, Ambulance. Ironically, the movie was reviewed better than many of Bay’s movies, yet it failed to breathe life into theaters towards the end of the Covid 19 pandemic.
Bay has always had a knack of delivering action-driven movies that bring plenty of bang for your buck…as long as you aren’t looking for meaningful dialogue and deep character development. Ambulance was a movie that completely delivered on this. The synopsis of the movie reads:
“In this breakneck thriller from director-producer Michael Bay, decorated veteran Will Sharp (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), desperate for money to cover his wife’s medical bills, asks for help from the one person he knows he shouldn’t–his adoptive brother Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal). A charismatic career criminal, Danny instead offers him a score: the biggest bank heist in Los Angeles history: $32 million. But when their getaway goes spectacularly wrong, the desperate brothers hijack an ambulance with a wounded cop clinging to life and ace EMT Cam Thompson (Eiza González) onboard. In a high-speed pursuit that never stops, Will and Danny must evade a massive, city-wide law enforcement response, keep their hostages alive, and somehow try not to kill each other, all while executing the most insane escape L.A. has ever seen.”
‘Ambulance’ Is a Movie That Deserved More Attention Than It Received
For action movie fans, Ambulance was a thrilling return to form for Michael Bay, who stepped away from his divisive big IP swings in the Transformers and Ninja Turtles franchises to deliver an original movie that audiences were sold on.
One reviewer called the movie a “heart-pounding epic,” while another said it delivered a “hell of a non-stop car chase action thriller that totally ignites 2025!” Obviously, this review was from someone catching the movie for the first time on Netflix. However, there were others who clearly cannot bring themselves to like Bay’s over-the-top style of action movie, with the negative reactions calling it a “brainless mess,” and “the most mind-numbing, stupid machoism movie ever made.” Pretty much sums up what Bay does and his fans love.
Ambulance currently holds a strong 87% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, and even if critics were more divided at 68% – when are they not for this kind of action movie – the film clearly did enough to please the people it was made for. Unfortunately, that really did not show in the movie’s financial result. The movie made just $52.3 million on the back of its fortunately reasonable $40 million budget, but its return to Netflix is once again elevating its status as a cult classic thanks to its reappraisal by all those people who did not turn out to see it in cinemas three years ago.
Ambulance is currently at number 3 on the U.S. Netflix chart.
- Release Date
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April 8, 2022
- Runtime
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136 minutes