This week at Movieland, action auteur (a filmmaker with a specific style that’s distinguishably theirs) Michael Bay’s “Game of Drones” was on full display in the form of just his second Rotten Tomatoes-certified “fresh” outing, and first since 1996’s Alcatraz affair, The Rock.
In a career that has seen him Moon-drill Armageddon, romanticize a Titanic sequel titled Pearl Harbor, and liven a handful of Transformers installments, the director has never been one to shy away from liquidating cinematic lunacy. Yet it’s AmbuLAnce, a presumptive one-off swept up in the wave of the franchise tentpole Bay is most commonly associated with, that won’t make nearly as much of a return as expensive expeditions extrapolated from pre-existing intellectual property would; despite its redeeming qualities far exceeding the flaws.
The film pits Jake Gyllenhaal, who confessed in his Saturday Night Live monologue last week he’s abandoning method-performing in favor of a “make acting fun again” mantra, as a second-generation master heistman who corrals his adoptive black brother (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), a former Marine in need of a loan to cover his daughter’s surgical costs, into his armed day trade.
As Danny Sharp, the (criminally) one-time Oscar-nominee is as charismatic as he is indifferent to the sheer impossibility of his grand escape plans panning out. He sports more collaborative tenacity than, say, superior but less chess board-aware Al Pacino (Dog Day Afternoon) and Robert Pattinson (Good Time) could in comparable character studies. It’s Gyllenhaal’s conscious restraint while tapping into the animalistic bravado required that allow AmbuLAnce to become a true ensemble where he can also lift up his co-stars’ respective well-rounded characters in the process.
Abdul-Mateen (Watchmen, The Matrix: Resurrections), and Eiza González (Hobbs & Shaw, Godzilla vs. Kong), especially, breakout due to the nature of their morally sound divergent pathologies. González’ EMT “Cam” Thompson is taken hostage by the brotherly pair, forging a close bond with Abdul-Mateen’s Will as he, along with three doctors video-calling in, guide Cam through operating on a bullet-wounded rookie cop in the most fascinating and consensually agreed-upon 20mph “cops and robbers” car chase that’s ever graced the silver screen.
Though critics would call this his second hit, this reviewer contends it’s Bay’s best bet since Pain & Gain (2013), his juiced-up Coen Brothers-esque crime caper-comedy starring Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Anthony Mackie as Miami bodybuilding swindlers. The outrageous “based on a true story” tale is an even earlier example of admissible evidence to support Bay’s proclivities for utilizing irreverent humor as set-piece explosivity breakage is best done big, but not too big.
No disrespect to his mega-budgeted Ryan Reynolds/Netflix collaboration, Six Underground, but Bay’s creative genius – whether it’s all the shooting, or all the hoot-and-hollering – simply enchants with more vigor, and a more confident pull-trigger, when shot and projected for the
cinema experience. Although, to be fair, in terms of deadpan camaraderie, Keir O’Donnell (Wedding Crashers) and Garret Dillahunt (Raising Hope) have plenty as the FBI Agent and SIS Captain foils to the brothers’ fury. They could easily front their own NBC/ Universal/Peacock misadventure serial if the right people ignore the box-office underperformance, like they just did with MacGruber, and greenlight a billowing expansion unto the AmbuLAnce Cinematic Universe (ACU).
This is the type of movie the characters from Michael Mann’s Heat (1995) who barely made it out of their own downtown LA cityscape melee would kismetly hide out in; convincing themselves, all the while, through Buster Keatonian out-of-body counsel as they bleed out: they are not the bad guys–they are just the guys trying to get home.
Welcome back, Michael Bay. Everyone knows movie magic can’t occur without a proper showman at the helm. To paraphrase what he told Variety his mentor, Steven Spielberg, advised him; why make another Transformers when you still have originals like AmbuLAnce up your sleeve?
And on a Winter’s day, no less. After all, on the local front, we are still so weatherly removed from the summer blockbuster terrain Bay typically swims in, the unknowing moviegoer just maybe pleasantly surprised to see his name appear as the end credits commence for the quarter-one loot they just made off with.
Come See The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Saturday, 9:30 pm, at MOVIELAND CINEMAS!
The Theater is located at 1850 NY-112 in Coram.
