BY CHRISTOPHER STAMM
GUEST MOVIE REVIEWER
Ambulance (Now showing in theatres)
Rated R – for language and violence
This week I saw Ambulance, the latest release by Director Michael Bay, also known as the guy that made two too many Transformer movies because he needed a summer home in Aspen.
The basic plot: Decent guy needs money for sick wife, brother is bad guy, decent guy joins in on bad brother’s bank heist, and, of course, the heist goes funky. That’s when the plot gets a little original. They escape in an ambulance with an EMT and a wounded cop, with apparently every single police officer in the Los Angeles area in hot pursuit. (Meanwhile, everywhere else crime goes berserk, I suppose since everyone is busy chasing two guys in an ambulance. Oh wait – that’s Los Angeles every day now. Seriously, it’s like that city lives in Mad Max times or something.)
Honestly, very little new ground is broken here. It is ultra-violent, it has enough cussing in it to make me blush, and from what I can tell, the LA Police Department would need a massive job fair and an increase in their automobile budget by the time this film ended, if this was real.
The film is entertaining, though, despite leaving several plot holes behind when it ended.
Ambulance gets three out of five stars, but only because the action scenes are very well done and for star Jake Gyllenhaal’s over-the-top performance as a psycho.