‘Ambulance’ is more than just one of Michael Bay’s best movies, it’s one of his most human.

If one were to judge a movie only from its trailer, then Ambulance, Michael BayLast but not least, check a lot of boxes on what a Michael Bay movie should theoretically be in 2022. Too many scary bombs? check. The character sings? check. Is the car going really fast? Of course, check (the movie is called Ambulance with reason). Military law enforcement raiding the director’s shiny rim while the American flag flutters in the background? Check and check.

Alas, there is a surprise in store for everyone who buys tickets Ambulance Expect more old Bayhem. for one, Ambulance Bay’s best film in ages – easily argued since his lizard-brained masterpiece Bad Boys IIAnd maybe even since The Rock. The film, while far from an unfavorable economic story, is also scaled back for this famous director. There are no Transformers (thankfully), and no finale where American cities are reduced to dust, even if Los Angeles’ highways admit it. The film is also almost devoid of Bay’s tendency towards toxicity: happily avoiding the racist jokes and the director’s lecherous gaze, Ambulance It appears to be, without question, Bay’s most human film to date. We say, it’s almost mature by his standards.

‘Ambulance’ shows growth and growth from Michael Bay

For a movie that moves forward non-stop for hours, Ambulance Start quietly. The first image we see is of a boy, William Sharp, played masterfully as an adult by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. Young Will is seen walking through the rough but lively streets of his Los Angeles neighborhood with his step-brother Danny, played as an adult by Live Wire. Jake Gyllenhaal. As Bay turns to the modern era, he presents similar scenes, willingly, in which the adult Will pleads with the insurance adjuster to cut him a break from his wife’s expensive experimental surgery, an act that ultimately leads to the film’s plot. Even before the operation of Ambulance Beginning with sincerity, Bay already has us believe in flaws, fraught men and bonds throughout their lives.

Related: ‘Ambulance’ Ending Explained: Violence, Death and Redemption

Admittedly, the friendship setting that tests the battle of the central couple is just a few shades away from feeling like a screenwriter’s cliché: Danny, under the tutelage of his psychotic criminal father, eventually drifted into a life of crime, while choosing to enlist in the military. However, Gyllenhaal and Abdul-Mateen are never anything less than electric when they’re on screen together, each actor bringing a lifetime of anger and regret to Bay’s intense dialogue exchanges.

Ambulance Kick into gear, story-wise, when Danny enters Will’s account in a $32 million bank heist to help pay for his wife’s surgery. Of course, jumping ahead, our bad guys hijack an ambulance that’s being held by the town’s toughest EMT (Eiza González), and it all leads to the jaw-dropping, remarkably sustained car chase that comprises about 90% of the rest of the film.

Signs of maturity in Ambulance Related to how Bay stages his famous overblown costumes. For once, there is a sense of moral weight to human life caught in the director’s violent conflict. The broken headphone shot that takes place outside the bank after the robbery isn’t entertaining or fun: it’s scary, even if it’s filmed with all of Bay’s technical malaise. Something tells us how the director wants it.

Unlike in, say, Bad Boys II Or 6 underground – Where the audience is invited to chuckle in glib defiance at the show’s conventional destruction, here, Bay takes no pleasure in the collateral damage caused by his increasingly desperate central character. For once, he seemed shocked by all the chaos. That’s not to say that some of the chaos isn’t meant to be fun, but it never, not once, feels uncomfortable. As silly as the movie can be, the stakes are never anything less than life or death in a conscious sense.

Unlike many other Bay movies, ‘Ambulance’ relies on its characters

Ambulance Just will not work at all if we do not care about Danny, Will, or EMT endless resources of González, who is revealed to be a very complex character, developed as both of her co-stars. As the ambulance runs itself begins to follow the logic of the decadent cartoon (think Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner, only with enough explosive fire to bring the city of Angels to its knees), the desperation of the characters, and the instinct of their innocent animals to live at all costs (Danny often ensures that they will become a new house and no water. When we hear it) eventually become the most interesting special effects of the film.

Bay, like his friend and his teacher Steven Spielberg, there is frequent trade in archetypes. This changes in AmbulanceWhere the three dynamic, multi-dimensional deep, often very funny performances from the three of us ended up crossing over sometimes in the wide range of. Chris Fedak’s otherwise airtight script. Gyllenhaal can do bugged-out, hyperactive intensity better than just about any other actor his age, and he lends himself very well to Bay’s unhinged macho world. After the first few introductions to Danny’s hit, there isn’t a scene where his character isn’t screaming at the top of his lungs, so much so that one begins to wonder why he and Bay haven’t worked together before.

If anything, Abdul-Mateen and González are tied for the movie’s MVP role. Abdul-Mateen brings his own unique and interesting spin on HBO’s iconic character keep watchLike last year Resurrection of the Matrix, and the actor’s winning streak continues here. Whenever he is on screen, Abdul-Mateen imbues Ambulance With gravitas this elevates to the upper echelon of Bay’s career. González is saddled with a tricky part, but she can nail the beats of comedy, tension, and pathos with screen resolution for twice her age. In the end, the actress was allowed to do more in this boy’s club than she liked. Hobbs & Shaw Or Children driveAnd there’s the delicious noise that her character FaceTimes a pair of understandably complicated trauma surgeons to talk her through surgery as an ambulance doing 60 miles an hour is racing for one of the single most thrilling sequences of 2022.

Although the scene mentioned above will not feel as exciting as it does if something is real, something human, is not at risk. Of course, Ambulance There was a launch of submarine-launched missiles, Garrett Dillahunt As an intelligent policeman with a large dog named Nitro, and in order to attack a group of police armed lowrider. Ambulance It’s a really crazy movie, far from what any normal person might consider “reality”, but it comes with a really beating heart.

In previous Bay films, we were rarely invited to care about the characters. More often than not, they are sexy human window dressing for the attack of beautiful carnage that Bay-heads come to see. What the director ended up proving Ambulance is that his signature style is actually more effective when he distances himself from the loud nihilism that has sometimes defined his oeuvre (see: Armageddon And 13 hours: Benghazi’s secret armyTwo of Bay’s more sincere films, and two of his better ones).

‘Ambulance’ builds to an emotional climax

Ambulance The emotional climax occurs between the second and third acts, as Danny and Will aim to find a quick break in the midst of what has been an extremely stressful day. Danny, stressing that he must be “comfortable,” began to listen Christopher Cross’s yacht rock staple, “Sailing.” Naturally, Will joined. This lighthearted interlude is played for real laughs: how could it not be? The scene is also a much needed breather from the relentless barrage of pure adrenaline the audience has been put through until that point. However, if one stops to dissect the lyrics of the song itself, they seem to speak to Will and Danny’s shared predicament on a cosmic level:

“Well, it’s not far from paradise,

At least it wasn’t for me.

And if the wind is right, you can run.

and find peace.”

Will and Danny’s great escape is on the horizon. We were there with them every nerve-wracking step of the way. All the pair have to do is keep moving forward — which is fitting, since Danny’s stated ethos throughout the run is “We don’t stop.” Even the singing of the Cross tune, which our protagonist sings with childhood enthusiasm, signifies the feeling of being freed from the shackles of society: of being truly free, and without doubts:

“sailing,

Take me to the place I’ve always heard it might be.

It’s just a dream and the wind to take me

Soon I will be free.”

We want to believe that these baptized brothers will find paradise one day. We want to believe that one day soon they will both be free to go home.

It didn’t end like that. For hard cases like Danny and Will, it never does. That their situation ended tragically should not be surprising. What is surprising is the act of keeping honest to goodness, near the end of the Michael Bay film. In fact, it is more than just a welcome shock: it is cinematic.