Review: Ambulance is Michael Bay's brand of prestige.
, Bay’s earliest films and the ones that installed him as a crass, hyper populist poet of the era. But Bay is older now. He’s done some thinking, and he wants to connect that seasoned maturity—and refined filmmaking sensibility—to the verve of his youth.
His new film is just as frenzied as all the rest, but there are precious few leering shots of the backsides of young women, far less chauvinistic bombast and antic humor . The film’s politics are decidedly pro-cop—in awe of the LAPD’s near-military capabilities—but sensitive to the crooks, too. There’s even a gay supporting character who is only slightly mocked, and who gives it right back to the meatheads doing the teasing.
—or, rather, one single, sustained part—are in the chasing, the ambulance careening around the city with police in strategic pursuit. The endless churn of the film is enveloping, the stakes ratcheting up and up to the point that’s crack EMT Cam performs invasive surgery, guided by doctors on video conferencing, at 60 miles per hour. But a few of the film’s quieter moments register too, small instances of care and detail that add a faint humanist texture to the film.
It would be easy to get caught up in the majesty of Michael Bay reasserting, and perhaps reintroducing, himself and declare the film some kind of garish masterpiece, much as many of us came close to with Bay’s deliriously lurid. But those generous interpretations do eventually run up against the concrete wall of Bay’s uglier fetishes and sabotaging impulses. In, he gradually loses control of the tight design of the film’s beginning.
feels much bigger than its production actually was, a reminder to studios—one hopes, at least—that maximalism needn’t cost $200 million plus however much a green screen goes for. In that way, I hope thatis a massive hit and begets more like it. Further descendants may come with smarter tweaks, cleverer, more daring riffs. And so on and so on until we are, just maybe, living once again in an action heyday less reliant on digital glare. Help us, Michael Bay.
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