Too Much Michael Bay: Headache-Inducing

Not having seen a Michael Bay movie in years, I was in the mood for one. An L.A. bank robbery/ambulance chase movie? Sounded fun to me. You can count on Bay to deliver pleasing clichés about coolly capable macho guys, women who are as indestructible as they are beautiful, nonstop one-liners that are almost clever, and ecstatically overdone action scenes. Bay has made several good movies, notably The Rock and 13 Hours, plus one great one, Pain & Gain, and now that he has reached his late 50s, I assumed he might have learned to tame his youthful excesses a little.

Wrong! Bay exhibits the tastes of a 57-year-old middle-schooler. Ambulance, in which Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II play brothers who steal $32 million from a bank and then flee in an ambulance when their score falls apart, is a Michael Bay picture on steroids, which is to say it’s steroids on steroids. Picture an ADD toddler with about four Red Bulls in him. Do you enjoy being stuck in a room with a flaming-cannonball toddler? I don’t. The movie’s demented energy is draining rather than fun.

About the Author

Kyle Smith

Kyle Smith is the film critic for the Wall Street Journal.

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Not having seen a Michael Bay movie in years, I was in the mood for one. An L.A. bank robbery/ambulance chase movie? Sounded fun to me. You can count on Bay to deliver pleasing clichés about coolly capable macho guys, women who are as indestructible as they are beautiful, nonstop one-liners that are almost clever, and ecstatically overdone action scenes. Bay has made several good movies, notably The Rock and 13 Hours, plus one great one, Pain & Gain, and now that he has reached his late 50s, I assumed he might have learned to tame his youthful excesses a little.

Wrong! Bay exhibits the tastes of a 57-year-old middle-schooler. Ambulance, in which Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II play brothers who steal $32 million from a bank and then flee in an ambulance when their score falls apart, is a Michael Bay picture on steroids, which is to say it’s steroids on steroids. Picture an ADD toddler with about four Red Bulls in him. Do you enjoy being stuck in a room with a flaming-cannonball toddler? I don’t. The movie’s demented energy is draining rather than fun.