The mindless, explosive, CGI-laden Transformers movies have made Michael Bay notorious, but he’s clearly a competent director with a singular vision of action cinema. His most critically acclaimed films tend to have the smallest budgets. The mid-range production costs of movies like The Rock, 13 Hours, and Bay’s directorial debut Bad Boys restrained the “Bayhem” style to telling gritty, grounded stories with Michael Mann-style intensity, still full of spectacle but more interested in character.
Bay’s latest movie, Ambulance – in theaters on April 8 – provides more proof that he does his best work on smaller-scale action movies. Ambulance might be Bay’s greatest film to date, but there’s some surprisingly strong competition peppered in between Transformers movies on Bay’s filmography.
Ambulance Is The Best
The Action Is Refreshingly Grounded
In Ambulance, there are no sky-beams or collapsing buildings or alien robots shoving other alien robots into landmarks. The action sequences are refreshingly grounded: a Heat-style standoff with armed cops outside the bank, a back-to-back shootout in a cartel warehouse, a foot chase through an underground parking lot – every set-piece in Ambulance has a visceral realism (at least compared to the sci-fi antics of the Transformers films).
The majority of the movie is a police chase with real-world obstacles. The cars don’t turn into cybernetic warriors; they smash into fruit stands and get sliced in half by open trailer doors.
It’s Character-Driven
Ambulance isn’t driven by trailer-friendly set-pieces or intergalactic MacGuffins like Bay’s larger-scale blockbusters. Instead, its story is driven by character, focusing on the relationship between two estranged brothers and a war veteran’s struggle to get an insurance payout for his wife’s surgery.
The tension between the characters inside the ambulance is just as interesting (and sometimes even more interesting) than the Bayhem unfolding on the streets of Los Angeles.
Bay’s Version Of A Tony Scott Movie
Bay’s style of high-octane action filmmaking has always been heavily influenced by the works of Tony Scott, but Ambulance in particular evokes the visceral, character-driven intensity of a latter-day Tony Scott thriller like Unstoppable.
The fast-paced editing is made up of rapid cross-cuts between various protagonists dealing with the same external crisis. The script wastes no time setting up the characters and their conflicts before diving into the action.
Jake Gyllenhaal & Yahya Abdul-Mateen II Bring Their A-Game
The explosive action of Ambulance is bolstered by nuanced, committed performances from two of Hollywood’s greatest working actors: seasoned A-lister Jake Gyllenhaal and rapidly rising star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. Brotherhood is the primary theme of the movie, and Gyllenhaal and Abdul-Mateen share great chemistry as dysfunctional brothers raised by a notorious career criminal.
While the script isn’t particularly complex or powerful in its portrayal of brotherly love, the game efforts of Gyllenhaal and Abdul-Mateen elevate the material.
The Story Is Unpredictable
A lot of Bay’s movies follow predictable storylines indulging in familiar tropes – if they follow cohesive narratives at all – but Ambulance is totally unpredictable (unless the viewer happens to be familiar with the Danish film upon which it was based).
From the moment the bank robbery is foiled, it’s clear that Will and Danny have a pretty grim fate ahead. But, in lieu of the question of “if,” Bay has fun revealing the “how” of the brothers’ inevitable downfall.
Alternatives
Bad Boys (1995)
As with many well-known auteurs, Bay caught Hollywood’s attention straight away with an eye-popping debut feature. Starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence as Miami narcs Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett, Bad Boys is a uniquely Michael Bay take on the “buddy cop” formula. Bad Boys established Bay’s distinctive vision of action cinema right out of the gate: every shot is a big, bold, theatrical money shot – everything is delightfully exaggerated.
Smith and Lawrence share spectacular chemistry as a bickering “buddy cop” duo. In Bad Boys, the usual roles are reversed – the A-list movie star is the wacky one and the comedian is the “straight man” – but it works beautifully with Smith and Lawrence’s on-screen dynamic. Suffice to say, the movie is wildly entertaining and quickly earned Bay a widespread fan base.
Pain & Gain (2013)
Underrated by critics and underappreciated by audiences, Pain & Gain plays like Bay’s take on the Goodfellas formula: a grisly true-crime epic with dark humor, breakneck pacing, voiceover narration, and nonlinear storytelling.
What makes it work is that, unlike other Goodfellas imitators, Bay doesn’t try to make his own Scorsese movie; he makes a Bay version of a Scorsese movie. Pain & Gain has one of Bay’s most star-studded casts, headlined by Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne Johnson.
The Rock (1996)
Bay’s mid-‘90s hit The Rock is one of the most unique takes on the Die Hard formula. This isn’t “Die Hard on a plane” or “Die Hard on a train,” it’s “Die Hard on Alcatraz Island.”
Like Bad Boys, The Rock is a great buddy actioner. Nicolas Cage and Sean Connery share a brilliant back-and-forth as, respectively, dorky FBI weapons specialist Dr. Stanley Goodspeed and SAS badass John Mason, the only inmate to ever escape from Alcatraz.
13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers Of Benghazi (2016)
Often colloquially referred to as “the Benghazi movie,” 13 Hours is easily Bay’s most mature film. It’s based on the true story of an Annex Security Team who fended off several attacks by militants to defend the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.
It’s an important story and Bay brings Black Hawk Down-style intensity to the proceedings. This was the first movie that proved John Krasinski could shed his familiar Jim Halpert image and carry a starring vehicle on the big screen.
Bad Boys II (2003)
Bigger, bolder, and more bombastic than the first one, Bad Boys II is the pinnacle of Bayhem. Smith and Lawrence are even more comfortable in their on-screen pairing the second time around.
The two-and-a-half-hour Bad Boys sequel is possibly a little overlong as the globetrotting finale feels excessive and tagged-on, but it’s all-action. According to Hot Fuzz’s Danny Butterman, Bad Boys II is the peak of action cinema: “You ain’t seen Bad Boys II?”