Jake Gyllenhaal
Danny Sharp
Overview
Decorated veteran Will Sharp, desperate for money to cover his wife's medical bills, asks for help from his adoptive brother Danny. A charismatic career criminal, Danny instead offers him a score: the biggest bank heist in Los Angeles history: $32 million.
Cast
12 people
Reviews
6 min readThe Siren Song of Chaos: Michael Bay’s Ambulance and the Illusion of Control
I’ve seen this movie before. Not this movie, exactly—same director, same explosions, same men yelling into radios—but the feeling it leaves behind: a kind of adrenalized exhaustion, like you’ve just sprinted up a flight of stairs only to realize you forgot why you were running in the first place. Ambulance is a heist film that doesn’t care about the heist, a brotherhood drama that treats its central relationship like a plot device, and an action spectacle that mistakes volume for intensity.
And yet. There’s something hypnotic about the way Michael Bay orchestrates chaos, even when the chaos itself feels hollow.
The premise is simple enough: Will Sharp (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), a decorated veteran drowning in medical debt, is roped into a bank robbery by his adoptive brother Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal), a career criminal with a grin that’s equal parts charm and menace. What’s supposed to be a quick in-and-out job goes sideways almost immediately, leaving the brothers trapped in the back of an ambulance with two hostages—a wounded cop (Eiza González) and a bag full of stolen cash—while the entire LAPD closes in.
From there, Ambulance becomes a high-speed chase movie where the chase is less about movement than about the illusion of escape. The ambulance doesn’t go anywhere. It just circles the same blocks, the same sirens, the same futility.
Bay’s films have always been about the spectacle of destruction, but here, the destruction feels oddly personal. The ambulance itself is a perfect metaphor for his style: a vehicle designed to save lives, repurposed as an instrument of mayhem. The camera lingers on the bloodstains, the flickering monitors, the way the interior becomes a claustrophobic stage for the film’s central performances.
And what performances they are—or, at least, what performances they could have been. Abdul-Mateen II plays Will with a quiet desperation, his body coiled tight like a spring. You can see the weight of his choices pressing down on him, the way his hands tremble when he’s forced to make a decision that violates everything he believes in.
It’s the kind of role that could have been the emotional core of the film, if the film had any interest in emotional cores.
But this is a Michael Bay movie, which means the human moments are always secondary to the next explosion. The script (by Chris Fedak, based on the 2005 Danish film Ambulancen) tries to have it both ways: it wants to be a gritty character study about brotherhood and survival, and it wants to be a neon-lit action extravaganza where cars flip through the air like pancakes. The problem is that these two impulses don’t just coexist—they actively undermine each other.
Full Plot (Spoilers)
Spoiler warning
This section contains the full plot, including major story reveals. Overview above stays spoiler-free.
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsMichael Bay’s High-Octane Chaos: Behind the Scenes of Ambulance (2022)
Michael Bay doesn’t do subtle. His 2022 action thriller Ambulance is a two-hour adrenaline rush, packed with explosions, high-speed chases, and the kind of over-the-top stunts that have become his signature. But what was it like for the cast to step into Bay’s world of controlled chaos? latestnetflix.com's take is that the behind-the-scenes stories reveal a director who pushes limits—sometimes to the breaking point—and actors who embraced the madness.
Bayhem in Full Effect
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8cDVrCowUw
If there’s one word to describe Michael Bay’s filmmaking style, it’s "bigger." The director is known for his relentless energy on set, and Ambulance was no exception. In interviews, the cast has described Bay’s approach as equal parts exhilarating and exhausting. Jake Gyllenhaal, who plays a morally ambiguous paramedic-turned-bank-robber, revealed that Bay’s intensity directly influenced his character’s manic energy. "Michael’s just on, all the time," Gyllenhaal said in a featurette . "He’s running around, he’s screaming, he’s laughing—it’s like being in a hurricane."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-IKDPttjpA
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, who plays the other half of the criminal duo, echoed the sentiment. In a roundtable discussion, he recalled Bay’s hands-on approach to stunts, often insisting on practical effects over CGI. "He wants you to feel the heat, the speed, the danger," Abdul-Mateen II said . That commitment to realism led to some of the film’s most jaw-dropping sequences, including a helicopter crash and a high-speed ambulance chase through Los Angeles.
Eiza González, who plays a paramedic caught in the crossfire, described Bay’s set as a "controlled circus." "You never know what’s going to happen next," she said . "One minute you’re doing a quiet scene, the next minute there’s an explosion behind you." That unpredictability kept the cast on their toes—and occasionally pushed them to their limits.
Stunts That Defied Logic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4Pua6ghxSQ
Bay’s films are notorious for their death-defying stunts, and Ambulance delivered in spades. Gyllenhaal, who performed many of his own stunts, called one particular moment the "craziest" of his career. In a behind-the-scenes clip, he described a scene where his character leaps from a moving ambulance onto a helicopter—while both vehicles are in motion . "I don’t know how I didn’t die," he joked. The stunt required precise timing, multiple takes, and a whole lot of trust in the crew.
Abdul-Mateen II also got in on the action, performing a stunt where his character is dragged behind a speeding ambulance. The actor later admitted it was "terrifying," but Bay’s enthusiasm kept him going. "Michael was like, ‘This is gonna be awesome,’" Abdul-Mateen II recalled . "And it was."
The film’s practical effects extended to the ambulance itself, which was rigged with cameras and explosives to capture the chaos up close. González, who spent much of the film inside the vehicle, said the experience was "claustrophobic and intense." "You’re in this tiny space, and everything around you is exploding," she said . "It’s like being in a war zone."
A Cast United by Chaos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5bEMoaDksg
Despite the physical demands, the cast seemed to thrive under Bay’s direction. In a lighthearted featurette, the actors played a game where they had to guess their own movies from terrible descriptions . The camaraderie was evident, with Gyllenhaal and Abdul-Mateen II playfully roasting each other’s performances. "Yahya’s character is just so cool," Gyllenhaal teased. "Mine is just sweaty and panicked."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyruaPjDjpI
Bay himself joined in on the fun, though his idea of "fun" often involved more explosions. In a roundtable discussion, he joked about his reputation for going "full-crazy" on set . "I don’t know how to make a movie any other way," he admitted. The cast, for their part, seemed to appreciate his unfiltered passion. "He’s like a kid in a candy store," González said . "And we’re just along for the ride."
The Verdict: Bayhem or Bust?
Ambulance may not have been a critical darling—it holds a 68% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes and a 5.6/10 on SensCritique 
—but it delivered exactly what Bay fans crave: nonstop action, over-the-top stunts, and a director who refuses to tone it down. For the cast, it was a wild, exhausting, and ultimately rewarding experience.
As Gyllenhaal put it: "You don’t work with Michael Bay if you want a quiet, introspective film" . And in Ambulance, quiet is the one thing you definitely won’t get.
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.
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