Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Moses Ingram and Eiza Gonzalez
Distributor: Universal Pictures International
Runtime: 136 mins. Reviewed in Apr 2022
Reviewer: Peter W Sheehan
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This dramatic action-thriller is about two adoptive siblings, who rob a bank, and steal an ambulance after the robbery goes wrong. The plot unravels as those in the ambulance attempt to get away. The film mixes aggressive action scenarios with moral dilemmas.
This American action-thriller is based on the 2005 Danish film of the same name, which was directed by Laurits Munch-Peterson and Lars Andreas Pedersen. In this remake, Danny Sharp (Gyllenhaal) and his adoptive black brother, Will (Abdul-Mateen II) come together to rob a bank in Los Angeles. When they attempt to steal the money, the robbery goes terribly wrong, and moral dilemmas and personal conflicts surface.
Will is a decorated war veteran from Afghanistan who needs a little over $200,000 for his wife’s surgery, and she will die without that kind of financial help. Danny is a hardened career criminal and agrees to help Will for very different reasons. He requires a lot of money to sustain his lavish life style, and he talks Will into attempting a $32 million bank heist, which promises to be suitably lucrative for both of them. The robbery is Danny’s last big criminal escapade after a lifetime of robbing banks, and Will knows he will never again have to worry about how to pay the huge medical debts to keep his beloved wife alive.
When things go wrong in the robbery, and in the cross-fire that results, a young police officer (Moses Ingram) is wounded. The brothers find that they can no longer use their getaway car as planned. They steal an occupied ambulance, and the wounded officer is taken with them, which creates ‘a hostage situation’.
As the ambulance speeds away, a young, female paramedic, Cam Thompson (Gonzalez), finds herself left in the ambulance, tending to the injured police officer, who is in a critical condition. The behaviour of Will and Danny becomes frantic when a huge number of police give chase, and everybody’s lives are threatened. The paramedic wants to keep the injured officer alive, and the brothers are divided on how much they want to do to keep him breathing, and tensions among everybody surface. The ambulance of the original film had a dying heart patient and a hospital intern, and the original Danish thriller revolved principally around the moral dilemma of whether the ambulance should turn around to save the patient’s life. Emphasis was placed in the earlier film on a dying patient’s welfare. The scope of this film has been considerably widened.
The film descends quickly into a series of staccato-style action sequences involving car-upturns and somersaults, violent explosions, fierce gun battles, bullet cross-fire, and menacing helicopters whirring overhead – with some stomach-turning surgery by Will and Cam on the wounded officer.
A swarm of police cars pursue the ambulance, and in the to and fro, it is the film’s high action scenarios, which separate the movie from the Danish original. Frenetic, frantic, explosive and aggressive action reframe moral conflicts almost entirely. In this film, what emerges as most important is the threat to survival by the showdown between the police and the criminals they hunt. Human feelings surface now and again – especially in the movie’s concluding scenes. However, too much aggression has preceded to leave a lot of room for sentiment.
Jake Gyllenhaal is an accomplished actor. In Brokeback Mountain (2005), for example, he delivered a finely nuanced character portrayal of a gay cowboy, which was exceptional. Subtlety in this movie is not the name of the game. Director Bay has delivered, as expected, a high-octane thriller movie with an incredible number of special effects – impressively actioned, and photographed. This movie aims for explosive thrills, and Bay delivers them in an aggressive, visually dominating way, literally saturating the screen with them for almost the entire film.
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