2022 Catch-up #4.

Watched the UHD 4K Blu-ray (and some of the extras in disbelief).

The Bay-breakdown of the action genre.

This film is the reason I've watched not as many films as I would've liked because it took us five consecutives days to finish it as we kept falling asleep.
Heralded as Michael Bay's return to 90's form but in reality it's Bay at his most coked-up, malusing new technology (drone shots man!) to deliver the most uninspiring, boring, bloated and uncreative car chase movie ever made.

Will (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) is a frustrated ex-military citizen who's angered by America's inhuman social security system, Bay's attempt at social criticism, and needs money to pay for his wife's cancer treatment.
He visits his stepbrother Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal) who just happened to be planning the most ridiculous bank heist in motion picture history.
As everybody is dumb as nails, Will thinks his noble reasons are enough to tag along on this suicide mission and warrant a criminal path with as much victims, collateral damage and induced trauma as possible.
Woob-woob gobbledy wobbledy BOEM BOEM Bayhem ensues.

Jan de Bont's "Speed (1994)" proved that it's perfectly possible to deliver an exciting action romp around a moving speeding vehicle, throwing creative surprises around each corner and engaging an audience in suspense. It also had real music instead of a loud ambient bass with dubstep woob-woobs.

Bay's "The Ambulance" took that concept, added a constant digital artificial wobble in every scene threatening to give you more motion sickess than "The Blair Witch Project (1999)" and stuffed it with pointless drone shots, breaking up the flow of an action sequence at each drone climb to a skyscraper and a 180 degree drop down. There's no clever or cool reason to insert these, they're just there because Bay had the technology.

I like some sense of spacial awareness during a prolonged and chaotic action sequence so I've got some clear ideas about who's where and who's shooting who to get invested in the moment. Bay didn't care and added jarring shots, sabotaging his own film and making it absolutely impossible to follow. If you thought the Jason Bourne films were shaky cam extremes, Bay wants you to hold his beer. It becomes tiresome, annoying and boring as hell. There are even dialogue scenes between two people where a drone is constantly flying around them. You'll beg for static shots.

In the extras the actors begged Bay to give their characters a couple of breathers, if they didn't, Bay's ego would have nullified even the smallest amounts of character moments these actors could bring and add even more drone shots.
Every actor crawled into Bay's ass by exaggerating how much of an honor it was to be in one of his films. Sure, he had a couple of fun entertaining action flicks in the nineties, but those times are far gone.

Take away the bloated budgets and technology from Bay so he's forced to be creative again, making less cynical brand name garbage that is "Ambulance".
Uwe Boll, another big ego, even did the social commentary better in an entertaining way with "Assault on Wall Street (2013)".

Just watch real Hong Kong action flicks or the amazing indie filmmakers and stuntmen turned directors channeling those with stuff like "The Raid (2011)" or the "John Wick" flicks.
Bay has been outclassed a long time ago.