Ambulance

The most fun I’ve ever had watching a Michael Bay movie was when I turned on the infamous commentary track from Ben Affleck for Armageddon.

If you have never heard it I urge you to track it down. Affleck spends the entire running time making fun of the premise of the movie and his own performance.

I asked Michael why it was easier to train oil drillers to become astronauts than it was to train astronauts to become oil drillers, and he told me to shut the f**k up.

Ben Affleck

The second most fun I have ever had at a Michael Bay movie was when I was in high school and saw The Rock for the first time. The Rock was about as good as American action cinema got in the 1990s. You’ve got Nic Cage just starting to ascend as a movie hero, Sean Connery playing Bond (it’s not Bond for legal reasons but it’s Bond), and Ed Harris as a complex and interesting villain.

That’s gonna put Ambulance at number three, maybe. The Transformers movies aren’t for me and I remember liking Bad Boys but not enough that I ever want to watch it again.

I didn’t have a lot of hopes for Ambulance. I grew up and Michael Bay never did. My plan for Bay over the last 20 years or so was just to avoid him. He is a great action director but he is not interested in the things that I am interested in and his movies do not seem like they are ever going to be about the things that will entertain me.

You should not go into a restaurant in a desert and order seafood. Nor should you ask Michael Bay to suddenly wake up one day and become Tarantino, or Fincher, or Nolan.

But, after I got past a weak set up this turned into a good time. Ambulance is two things: Its Heat but only the cool bank robbery and chase scenes and it’s Grand Theft Auto: The Movie.

Danny Sharp (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a coked-out criminal genius who has a major bank score planned and primed. His brother Will Sharp (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) is a soldier who got out of the crime business but needs a big score to pay for his wife’s surgery. It might have been his daughter’s surgery. I wasn’t paying that much attention.

If you can get over the ridiculous setup of Will coincidentally arriving at his brother’s house on the very day of the heist. Or past the idea that someone like Will would go along with this at all, then the rest of the movie is a money machine.

Gyllenhaal screaming “This is Cashmere!” after he gets blasted with a fire extinguisher? Money.

Garret Dillahunt as a no-nonsense LAPD captain who calls off a chase because his beloved dog might be in one of the cars and in danger? Money.

Eiza Gonzalez as the the most beautiful and competent paramedic in the world? Money.

The two leads singing the 1979 Christopher Cross hit Sailing during the chase? Cash on the barrelhead!

All of that plus repeated shoutouts to the best crime video game of our lifetime. That includes — at one point — avoiding the cops by having the ambulance quickly spray-painted under a bridge.

Sometimes you go to a restaurant and take a chance on something different. Isn’t it nice when that works out and you leave the table full and satisfied?