Ambulance: Michael Bay signs a supersonic and exciting B series (review)

Armed with a Speed ​​argument – ​​a crazy ambulance launched at full speed in Los Angeles – Michael Bay signs a gloriously anarchic and joyfully kamikaze manifesto.

Ambulance is coming with a bang, this Sunday on France 2. Do you like action cinema? So don’t miss this “wrinkled” filmed in full confinement in a Los Angeles with almost empty streets. Here is our review, originally published for its cinema release, in March 2022.

The pitch is of course reminiscent of Speed : after a robbery gone wrong, two bandits (Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) flee in an ambulance in the company of a rescuer taken hostage (Eiza Gonzalez) and a dying cop – the forces of the order cannot therefore shoot at the vehicle to stop it and a monstrous chase begins on the freeways of the

Michael Bay also pays tribute to Heat and even allows himself winks at Rockhis own classic 1996 vintage. But if a mood nineties travels Ambulanceit is above all a film of here and now, the director having taken advantage of the state of semi-lethargy in which Los Angeles was plunged, because of health restrictions, to envisage the city as an immense playground and the ‘invest in guerrilla cinema style.

At first, he appears almost too intoxicated with the possibilities available to him. The camera makes astonishing loops in the air before crashing onto the asphalt – it’s very funny but we don’t really understand what meaning it has. But Ambulance, in reality, you have to wear it out. The film works on a pure principle of inflation and entropy. The longer, the better – at Bay, sometimes things are that simple.

A few slip-ups doped with black humor (a surgical operation carried out via Zoom!) recall the most elevated moments of Bad Boys 2 and give the whole thing the air of a gloriously anarchist and joyfully kamikaze manifesto. The profession of faith of a true cinema nut.

Michael Bay – Ambulance: “The police love my films, I don’t really know why”