AMBULANCE

 

I am not a Michael Bay hater, there are plenty out there who can take up that mantle, but I understand why some people find his style intolerable, it's because of movies like this. "Ambulance" is an action chase film, that takes every camera trick you can imagine and inserts it into every scene in the movie, for no reason other than to try to convince you that you are watching something exciting. Sometimes it works, when we can see all the cars in a chase at once, or when we switch to an aerial view occasionally, but often it is simply distracting and annoying. Every sequence set inside the ambulance does not really need to be highlighted with ten different camera angles and constant shaky cam photography. One in a while, a static shot of the details would make us focus on the event, rather than how it is being shot.

At times Bay appears to be parodying himself. The characters actually reference "The Rock" and "Bad Boys" so the film is self aware that it is just an action piece of entertainment, not to be taken too seriously. I would be ok with that if the plot made a little more sense.  This is a movie based on a Danish film that was only 80 minutes long, somehow they manage to add an extra hour to that, and I suspect you can pick out a series of plot complications that make up that extra time. The paramedic performing surgery directed by two doctors on the golf course using Face Time, would be one of those additions. The gang cartel connection would be another. This film finds several ridiculous concepts and strings them together to fill in story. 

"Ambulance" looks like it is going to start as a heist film, but we mostly see the after effects of an escape and  that is probably a good thing. Jake Gyllenhaal's character, Danny, is supposed to be a world class bank robber but he has hired the biggest bunch of goons to help him carry off the film, you wonder who he used in all the other crimes he is supposed to have committed, where are they? Some of the guys look like standard Black Ops Mercenaries, and some look like hippie recruited off the street. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II plays his adopted brother Will and he is supposedly not a criminal but a war hero. As a driver he is dragooned to replace some other clown at the last minute and you can see that this is just a justification to get a "good" brother "bad" brother story which does not feel at all organic.

L

In the poster title of the film, they draw attention to the location of the movie by highlighting two letters in the title "AMBULANCE", so if you like movies set in L.A., you should like this right? Well, as a sixty year former resident of the city, this movie continues to make the same mistakes a hundred other films have made. Twenty minutes of driving at high speeds in downtown, leaving destruction in your wake, will not result in your finding clear roads in the same area you drive to five minutes later. Tourists will be disappointed to learn that the airport is not ten minutes from the civic center. Oh, and the biggest laugh of the film is the reference the lead S.I.S. captain makes to "rush hour starting in 45 minutes". In Southern California, there has not been a distinct rush hour for three decades, it is pretty much 24/7 bumper to bumper on all the roads that get referred to in the film. If you want the film to be about a car chase in L.A., you factor that in, there are car chases on the local news there once a week and they are more compelling than the stuff that happens here. 

The best parts of the film are the credits, which only last a couple of minutes. If only Hollywood would steal that concept and leave the visual mayhem to Bay for the movies he makes. Eiza González as the EMT that gets caught up in the story is fine, but she is asked to do the impossible, play a rational character in an irrational scenario. 

Bad Boys for Life

Not that anyone ever took these films seriously, but after "Hot Fuzz" and "Team America", it seemed to me that the secret was out that these movies are sort of a parody of real cop movies. Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider did long surveillance in seedy conditions, ate and drank crappy food in cramped cars and mostly the car chases were collision courses in old cars. Cops drew their guns but were careful about firing, and if they weren't the ending was downbeat rather than celebratory. The early Michael Bay films took action to extremes, mixed the improbable with some humor and amped up the violence. It was a formula for success twenty years ago. Apparently, it still works in spite of the passage of time and the mocking of tropes that has gone on since the last time Will Smith and Martin Lawrence saddled up to sing and shoot.

I saw both of the previous films once each. I enjoyed them at the time but I have almost no recall of plot or other characters. The movies are strictly disposable entertainment. Nothing wrong  with that, but if I'm going to put a Michael Bay film on repeatedly, it's going to be "The Rock". I did not have high expectations for the film but I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it while I was in the theater. Bay does not direct [Although he does make an appearance], the directing team of Bilal Fallah and Adil El Arbi have the reins and they ride this pony for all it's worth. It does not have the pacing of a Bay film, but everything else is there, glamour, explosions, over the top violence and shiny images and people. It's like the 80s never died and "Miami Vice" became the biggest influence on movie making since "Jaws".

Before he put on the fat suit and dressed as a transvestite, Martin Lawrence was a pretty reliable comic actor in action films and urban based comedies. This movie reminds us of why he was a star for most of the 90s. Maybe he has worked more sparingly in the last few years because the material did not fit him, but for this film it does. Will Smith is still the first name above the title but Lawrence is the acting hero in this movie. The comedy is not slapstick but based on a couple of premises. The usual trope of retirement is used to gain some sympathy. His character is also a new Grandpa.  It is the second premise that I appreciated more though. His character Marcus has emotional regrets about the violence he has inflicted on the world and he is trying to make good on a deal with God to be a better man. Of course by the end that will fly out the window, but until it does it gives Lawrence plenty of opportunities to riff on his characters self doubts and the more conservative person he has become as a father/grandfather figure.

Will Smith plays Will Smith. He is still cock of the walk confident and handsome. Yet he is also getting older and some acknowledgement of that was called for. The turn in the third act seems a little close to his film from last year but I won't say too much. The plot does try to introduce new blood into the storyline and you can see the blueprint being laid down for future episodes of the series. It's probably a good idea that he follows the lead of Tom Cruise, make a franchise film in your comfort zone every couple of years, and people will not notice when the mediocre films flop as much.

The action is insane at times, including a climax in a burning hotel that features a helicopter explosion inside of an abandoned building. The motorcycle chase can't stand up to the Mission Impossible standards that have set the bar recently, but there are some good moments and a lot of gunplay to go with it. I don't think this edition of the buddy cop franchise is necessarily better than the previous two, but since it is recent, I can remember a bit more of what happened. Give me a couple of years and it will fade too. Then maybe I can watch all of them again before the inevitable "Bad Boys 4" gets unleashed. 

13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi

A minor disclaimer here, I don't hate Michael Bay and I also have all the respect in the world for America's fighting forces. With that said, we can get some of the political stuff out of the way. This movie does not lay the blame for the failure to protect Ambassador Chris Stevens on anyone. It does describe in detail the events of that fateful September 11, eleven years after the same date in NYC. I know there are people in that part of the world who simply want to be left alone to live their lives. Ideally under a government that protects and nurtures them. It is very hard to imagine from the first hand description provided by the men who told this story, how we are going to be able to help them do that and how we are supposed to be able to tell the good guys from the bad. This part of the world is loaded with groups armed to the teeth who want nothing less than absolute control over they fellow man. Libya and Syria are failed states that have a long way to go before diplomacy will be of much benefit.

One of the striking things about the whole incident is how hopeful Americans were, including the Ambassador, and how sad it is that those hopes have largely been crushed. This film shows that it was not a lack of fortitude on the part of the Americans on the ground that are responsible for those failures. This is primarily a salute to the warriors that we have asked to go into these places to try and make a difference. If this were a work of fiction, I know that some people would be criticizing the cliche story points of men separated from their families or the comradery of warriors in battle. The reason those things are cliches however is because they are true and they mean something to the people involved. The actors and director do an outstanding job in this film in presenting men who live for this kind of service but also the way they dread the price that they pay to self actualize this way.

Technically, these guys were not soldiers at the time, they were private contractors doing the job of soldiers. The story shows how the chain of command becomes problematic when this private security team, filled with the best kinds of former military personnel, has to but heads with the CIA and State department officials they are working with. Since they were employees of the agency, they deserve the status of heroes rather than mercenaries, which is a term some have used to describe these kinds of private contractors. The men in this story see their loyalty to the U.S., it's mission in the area and the people on the ground they are there to protect. John Krasinski and James Badge Dale play the two main figures in the story, Jack and Rone. Their relationship goes back to earlier service but the work they are doing and the co-workers on their team are clearly part of a brotherhood as evidence by the loyalty they show one another. Others at the scene made sacrifices as well and all of them fit well into the stereotype of single minded military guys with hearts of gold. If half the stuff that is shown in this film is depicted accurately, they are heroes many times over.

I started out by saying I'm not a hater of Michael Bay. That does not mean I will defend his "Transformers" movies, they are for the most part, loud mechanical exercises in cinematic excess. He can however build tension, stir patriotism and explode things in a way that make the story he is telling invigorating. It looks like he just needs a good story to make a good movie and here he has one. Back in 2001, he was celebrated for a shot in the trailer for the then upcoming "Pearl Harbor". It was a point of view sequence of a torpedo bomb being dropped during the December 7th attack. The movie never lived up to the awesomeness of that shot but it was clear that he had a good eye and the technical ability to make something like that feel real to us. We are presented with a couple of similar shots in this film and they work dramatically in the climactic battle that produces the biggest emotional tolls in the film. There are a few of his other excesses on display that show he directed the film but don't manage to take us out of the experience. John Woo likes flying birds, Michael Bay likes windblown cloth floating over the scenes of mayhem as a serene counterpoint to those events. There is a lot of shaky camera work in the film as well so if you get motion sickness let me recommend that you sit near the back of the theater.

The tension in the lead up to the critical day is thick, but not nearly as deep as the tautness during the firefight. The visualization of what must have happened to Ambassador Stevens is compelling, although the final script of his death is speculative. The fight at the CIA Annex however is well documented by the men who survived it and wrote the book that this movie is based on. It is never clear who is on your side and who is simply waiting to kill you. This was an ongoing conundrum for the tech team in the compound, who needed to know who to shoot and which lives to spare. That's a tough question to have to ask when there is gunfire and weapons all around you. It looks that the team did the best that anyone could have hoped for under the circumstances. I was incredibly moved by the final screen shots of the film and it was a reminder that what we saw for the previous two hours was not a make believe story, thought up to entertain us, but a dramatization of real events, designed to honor those who gave all for their country and their fellow warriors.