'Ambulance' review: Brain-dead on arrival

An unhelpful health care employee triggers a chain of tragic events in Michael Bay’s “Ambulance,” a searing work of social realism that exposes corporate America's dehumanizing focus on profits.Just kidding! This is a thriller without an intelligent thought in its head. It does, however, begin with an Afghanistan War veteran, Will Sharp (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), calling an HMO in the hopes that his wife’s surgery will be covered. It isn’t. “I risked my life for this country,” Will tells the unmoved phone rep, who hangs up just as the string section begins sobbing uncontrollably. Next thing you know, Will has grabbed a machine gun to help his sociopathic brother, Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal), pull off a multimillion-dollar bank robbery in Los Angeles.

We’re told Danny is a career criminal, but his adoptive brother turns out to be terrible at it. First, Will shoots a young cop named Zack (Jackson White). Feeling guilty, he piles the guy into an ambulance — then turns around and hijacks that. With tough paramedic Cam Thompson (Eiza González) doing the don't-die-on-me routine in the back, and the two brothers bickering in the front, the vehicle becomes a small stage for intense human drama, or at least for a great deal of yelling. Think the municipal bus in “Speed,” the runaway train in “Runaway Train” or, as helicopters circle overhead, O.J. Simpson’s Bronco.

Better yet, think of that meme with the flaming Dumpster floating down a river, and you’ll have captured the cinematic quality of “Ambulance.” Written by Chris Fedak from a 2005 Danish thriller, the movie seems almost proud of its many cliches: A tough-taking LAPD Captain played by Garret Dillahunt, a Mexican kingpin who fondles a machete (A Martinez), an FBI agent with a personal dog in the hunt (Keir O'Donnell) and an actual dog (cue the flatulence jokes). The characters try to mock their hackneyed selves before you can by cracking jokes about other Michael Bay movies (“The Rock,” “Bad Boys”) and by breaking the fourth wall with lines like, “Yeah, that’s a very expensive car chase.” Nevertheless, they still have to do all the dumb things the script tells them to do, like perform spleen surgery with a hair-barrette.

Danny is supposed to be brilliant and charismatic, but Gyllenhaal plays him as a hollering, hyperactive attention hog on the verge of nervous collapse. As for Abdul-Mateen (“The Matrix Resurrections”), his role isn’t exactly meaty: Will is one of most the most thoughtless, feckless and unsympathetic protagonists ever to hit a screen. “We’re not the bad guys,” Danny screams at his brother. Maybe so, but you will definitely leave “Ambulance” looking for someone to blame.

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com