Ambulance (2022 film)

Ambulance is a 2022 American action thriller film directed and produced by Michael Bay. A co-production between New Republic Pictures, Bay Films, Endeavor Content, and Project X Entertainment, it is based on the 2005 Danish film of the same name by Laurits Munch-Petersen and Lars Andreas Pedersen. The film stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and Eiza González and follows two adoptive siblings turned bank robbers who hijack an ambulance and take two first responders hostage.
Ambulance, first announced in 2015, went through several crew changes years before it entered production. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on Bay's career led him to come on board to direct. Filming took place in the midst of the pandemic in Los Angeles on a $40 million budget with cinematographer Roberto De Angelis. During post-production, editing was completed by Pietro Scalia and the musical score was composed by Lorne Balfe. The film premiered in Paris, France, on March 20, 2022, and is scheduled to be released in the United States on April 8, 2022, by Universal Pictures. It received generally positive reviews from critics.
==Plot==
War veteran Will Sharp, desperately in need of $231,000 for his wife Amy's surgery, reaches out to Danny, his adoptive brother and a life-long criminal, who talks him into taking part in a $32 million bank heist. Officer Zach, who goes to the bank to ask out a bank teller, is held hostage and accidentally shot by Will. The Special Investigation Section (SIS) of the LAPD arrives and shoots down the whole crew except Will and Danny. The brothers hijack an ambulance with EMT Cam Thompson on board, who is treating the injured Zach. Cam makes a desperate attempt to escape but decides to stay when Zach starts flatlining. 
SIS Captain Monroe deploys helicopters to chase after the ambulance. Cam gets Danny to help her use a defibrillator and Will to transfer some of his blood to Zach. Danny calls Papi, one of his father's criminal friends, for help losing the police. When Cam stops Danny from shooting Zach's partner, Mark, who has been chasing them, Danny threatens to throw her off the ambulance. FBI Agent Anson Clark, a past friend of Danny's, is put on the case. Zach begins to bleed out; Cam, with Will's assistance, performs surgery despite her inexperience. Cam tries to convince Will to stop Danny. Monroe, unaware of the surgery's success, moves forward with the operation and prepares to snipe Will and Danny without negotiating for Cam's life. Clark calls Cam and tells her to get down. Cam, wanting to save Zach's life, alerts Will and Danny about the snipers. Danny threatens Cam again, causing Will and Danny to fight and later listen to music together to ease the tension.
In the Los Angeles River, helicopters chase the ambulance as Danny shoots at them. Will and Danny drive on the opposite lane of the interstate, creating multiple accidents. On Papi's orders, his son, Roberto, drives an empty ambulance towards the police after filling it with C-4 explosives and deploys a machine gun to cause additional damage, which ends up killing Monroe. Mark chases down Roberto and kills him. Will and Danny escape to Papi's hideout. Papi asks the brothers to leave Zach and Cam with them; Will refuses to cooperate and teams up with Danny to kill Papi and his crew. In the chaos, Cam accidentally shoots Will using Zach's gun. Danny takes the ambulance to a hospital and is enraged when he finds Cam was the one who shot Will. When Danny threatens to kill Cam along with himself, Will is left with no choice but to shoot Danny, killing him. The police arrest Will and take him inside for surgery, Cam secretly gives some of the heist money to Amy, and Zach tells the police that Will saved his life.
==Cast==
* Jake Gyllenhaal as Danny Sharp
* Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Will Sharp
* Eiza González as EMT Cam Thompson
* Garret Dillahunt as Captain Monroe
* Keir O'Donnell as FBI Agent Anson Clark
* Jackson White as Officer Zach
* Olivia Stambouliah as Lieutenant Dhazghig
* Moses Ingram as Amy Sharp
* Colin Woodell as EMT Scott
* Cedric Sanders as Officer Mark
* A Martinez as Papi
* Jesse Garcia as Roberto
* Jose Pablo Cantillo as Jesus
* Wale Folarin as Castro
* Devan Chandler Long as Mel Gibson
* Randazzo Marc as Randazzo
* Victor Gojcaj as Victor
* Briella Guiza as Lindsey
* Brendan Miller as Trent
==Production==
===Development===
Ambulance is an American remake of the 2005 Danish film of the same name. Producer Bradley J. Fischer said Michael Bay was his first choice to direct the film but that the filmmaker had originally passed on the project. The film was announced on August 28, 2015, with Phillip Noyce attached to direct from a script written by Chris Fedak. Two years later, it was reported that Noyce had been replaced by directing duo Navot Papushado and Aharon Keshales, but this version of the film never entered production.
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic in Los Angeles affected Bay's career and canceled his plans to shoot his next film, Black Five. He recalled telling his agent "Goddamnit, I just want to get out and shoot something fast. I'm tired of being locked up at home". He pitched an idea to Donna Langley, the Chairwoman of Universal Pictures, and said he wanted to direct a "small" film focusing on the tension between characters trapped in a claustrophobic setting. Bay was reminded of Ambulance and told that the film could be shot on a relatively low-budget in a short period of time. "It kind of suited my needs," he said. On November 11, 2020, Bay was announced as the new director, and the film was referred to as a "character-driven project" that would move away from Bay's normality of "standard explosion-heavy fare" while using elements from Speed (1994) and Bad Boys (1995). Bay did not watch or read the screenplay of the original Danish film because he wanted to make the film his own.
The film was financed by Endeavor Content and produced by New Republic Pictures and Project X. Jake Gyllenhaal received the screenplay while shooting a different project in October 2020. The following month, the film was announced with Gyllenhaal and Dylan O'Brien in talks to star as the two brothers who hijack the ambulance and Eiza González in negotiations to star as the paramedic. Gyllenhaal's casting was a contributing factor in Bay's decision to shoot the film. To prepare for the role, González spent three months "working intimately with firefighters, EMTs, surgeons, [and] everyone around the medical care system." She also rented an ambulance and had a friend drive her around to improve her balance. On December 11, 2020, Universal Pictures confirmed they would distribute the film and announced O'Brien had dropped out of the project due to scheduling conflicts; Yahya Abdul-Mateen II was cast as his replacement when he was able to fit the film into his schedule, following a production delay on Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023). González was confirmed to star three days later. The rest of the cast was announced between January and May 2021.Multiple sources:
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===Filming===
The film was shot on a $40 million budget in Downtown Los Angeles. Filming wrapped after thirty-eight days.
During pre-production, stunt coordinator Mike Gunther put the three leads of the film through stunt driving courses to test their driving abilities. Supervising location manager Rob Gibson obtained driving permits for a large number of city streets and freeway corridors in the city using his close relationship with FilmLA. The cast and crew had to follow safety protocols due to the COVID-19 pandemic, such as wearing masks on set. To make the film feel authentic, the production hired real trauma surgeons, firefighters, SWAT teams, snipers, and over 50 LAPD officers for the shoot. Gyllenhaal was also allowed to improvise several of his lines. The production borrowed a total of six ambulances from Falck. The scenes inside of the ambulance were captured using three ambulances: one was driven with the crew on board; a second could be dismantled; and a third was rocked on a stage. According to Abdul-Mateen, the limited space inside of the ambulance required Gyllenhaal to hold the camera for a few takes.
Parts of the film, especially chase sequences, were shot using First Person View (FPV) drones by LightCraft. Michael Kase discovered the company after seeing their footage of the top of the Wilshire Grand Center. The drones in the film were flown by Drone Racing League pilots Jordan Temkin and Alex Vanover using VR headsets. Footage captured by the drones included scenes in the Los Angeles Convention Center and the city's Fashion District. In February 2021, an explosive stunt involving the ambulance was shared online. The helicopter chase sequence in the Los Angeles River was not in the script; Bay came up with the idea after two helicopters became available for use.
===Post-production===
Lorne Balfe composed the musical score; he previously collaborated with Bay on 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (2016) and 6 Underground (2019). The score was recorded in London's Abbey Road Studios, and is scheduled to be released on April 8, 2022, by Back Lot Music. Editing was completed by Pietro Scalia. Due to the film's budget, Bay said he was not happy with some of the visual effects in the film: "There's not a lot of CGI. And you know, some of the CGI is shit in this movie." In a separate interview, he added, "I don't use CGI much. On Ambulance there's very little CGI on it. It's all real crashes ... If you're using CGI, it needs to be realistic."
==Marketing==
The first trailer was shown at CinemaCon on August 25, 2021, and released online on October 21, 2021. It featured a cover of the song "California Dreamin'" sung by Bobby Womack. The Hollywood Reporter compared the footage to Heat (1995) and Training Day (2001), and Deadline Hollywood noted "the rapid rhythm that Bay does best." Entertainment Weekly said the film looked like "pure chaos, thanks to a lot of quick camera cuts, loads of gunfire, a high-speed ambulance chase, and Jake Gyllehaal doing the absolute most with his bank robber character." A second trailer was released on March 24, 2022. It featured the song "Sailing" by Christopher Cross. Entertainment Weekly wrote, "The latest trailer for the chaotic heist-gone-wrong film is peak Michael Bay, with everything you could possibly want from an action flick".
==Release==
Ambulance had its world premiere at the UGC Normandie in Paris, France, on March 20, 2022. It also had premiere events in Berlin on March 22, London on March 23, and Los Angeles at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on April 4. The Los Angeles event was attended by Jason Mamoa, who went out to support Abdul-Mateen, his Aquaman co-star. The film is scheduled to be released in the United States by Universal Pictures on April 8, 2022. The film was originally set to be released on February 18, 2022, coinciding with the release of Uncharted, but was moved forward after Sony postponed Bullet Train from April 8 to July 15, leaving the time slot open for another film. The film will stream on Peacock 45 days after its theatrical release. As a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Universal announced in March 2022 that it had "paused" the theatrical releases of all of its films in Russia, including Ambulance.
==Reception==
===Box office===
In the United States and Canada, Ambulance is scheduled to be released alongside Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and the wide expansion of Everything Everywhere All at Once, and is projected to gross $12–17 million from an estimated 3,400 theaters in its opening weekend.
Outside the U.S. and Canada, the film earned $4.4 million from 35 international markets in its opening weekend. In its second weekend, it made $6.6 million from 58 markets. As of March 29, 2022, the film's largest markets are Saudi Arabia ($2.1 million), Mexico ($1.7 million), France ($974,000), UAE ($769,000), and the UK ($686,000).
===Critical response===
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 67% of 49 critics reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.9/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "At top speed and with sirens wailing, Ambulance comes riding to the rescue for audiences facing an emergency shortage of Michael Bay action thrills." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 47 out of 100 based on 16 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".
Bay's direction was well-received by critics. John Nugent of Empire said the filmmaker's "tribute to the emergency services (which involves blowing several of them up) is noisy, messy and frequently absurd — yet still somehow his most gleefully entertaining effort in at least a decade." The Independents Clarisse Loughrey said it was "as exhausting as it is exhilarating, in the way you both expect and desire from a Bay film." Frank Scheck from The Hollywood Reporter and Danny Leigh from Financial Times also described it as "exhausting". While Scheck called it a "decently premised B-movie stretched out to an interminable 136 minutes", Leigh said it was "hard to resist" and that audiences "would miss Bay if he vanished from the Hollywood menagerie." Kevin Maher of The Times wrote, "Everything here is Bay squared. It's a film that simply does not stop."
The story and performances received some criticism. TheWraps Robert Abele said Gyllenhaal's acting was unconvincing and "over-the-top" and that Abdul-Mateen's character was a "poorly conceived good guy in over his head." He also said "Bay's addiction to confusion and pointlessness as operating visual narrative principles keeps this from being in any way pleasurable." Tim Grierson, writing for Screen Daily, said the film "spotlights [Bay]'s visual panache alongside his considerable storytelling weaknesses." The Guardians Peter Bradshaw said "Ambulance has everything ... except actors giving a decent performance as believable characters in a workable script." The Evening Standards Charlotte O'Sullivan said the film picks up once the characters enter the ambulance, and that "the B-movie [Gyllenhaal] and Bay have cobbled together is genuinely diverting."
==References==
==External links==
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