Ambulance starts with some potentially stirring social commentary. Partly about medical costs and insurance in the US, and partly about how ex-serviceman are treated on their return from war. The opening five minutes show us an almost moving portrayal of a young family. Moses Ingrams Amy looking after their son, while Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s Will tries to arrange treatment for a life saving surgery needed by his wife. 

You might be forgiven for thinking you’d walked into the wrong film.

But this is, at the end of the day, a film by Michael Bay. So after those opening five minutes, and once motive has been established for the conflicted Will, Ambulance promptly brushes this under the carpet, in favour of car chases, explosions, and gun fights.

And in truth, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. There is still definitely a place in cinemas for dumb, B-Movie, fun, and Ambulance delivers that in bucket loads.

Will is joined by on the caper by Jake Gyllenhaal’s Danny, his adoptive brother, who manages to convince him to join the heist. 

With his share of the $32,000,000 take, Will can pay for his wife’s hospital bills, and raise his son. With his share of the $32,000,000 take Danny can… I don’t know, do more of what Danny does. 

The two brothers are opposite sides of the coin. Both raised by a potentially abusive father towards a life of crime, which only one managed to escape.

Where Will, from the start, is clearly in two minds about his role, and is the calmer of the two, Danny is unhinged, seemingly enjoying, in some way, the fact that he has pulled his brother back in, and the chaos that threatens to engulf them.

Where Will has a clearly defined motive, something an audience can get behind, Danny’s is sketchy at best.

Ambulance could have easily turned into a forgettable, cat and mouse heist, if not for the titular vehicle, and the plot devices it allows.

Will and Danny, while trying to escape the police in the aforementioned ambulance, are also, with the help of hostage paramedic Cam - Played by Eiza González - having to try and keep alive a dying cop, who was already in the back of the ambulance when they hijacked it.

If, as an audience, we put to one side any thoughts of plausibility, this adds an interesting twist on the genre, which manages to keep the film interesting despite it bloated 136 minute runtime. 

If there was already a wedge between the brothers at the films start, Cam pries them further apart, and the differences between the two brothers becomes more and more apparent. Will is, ultimately, a good person who has made mistakes, struggling to escape his past. Danny is out only for himself. 

The chase itself is, for the most part, professionally filmed, but some the editing choices and cinematography seemed strange to me. 

The editing is, at time, too quick, making it difficult to get a handle on the geography of everything. It’s difficult to get a sense of how close the brothers are to escaping because little effort is put into letting you know where in the city they are.

Bay also seems to be overly taken with drone shots, the camera flying up buildings, flipping at the top, and then plummeting back down again, in a way that started to make me feel queasy early on. The drone has it’s places, if used sparingly, but it is overused here, meaning any gravitas it might have held feels boring by the end.

Ambulance is ridiculous. It is, to borrow a phrase from A Martinez’s superfluous villain Papi, dumb as a box of rocks. It pays no mind to the thought of collateral damage, and is overly long, but if you manage to suspend disbelief and just go along for the ride, you’ll get some enjoyment out of it. Though whether Ambulance will hold the same appeal on home release - without a cinemas surround sound and large screens - remains to be seen.