We know what we’re going to get with a Michael Bay movie just as sure as know what we’ll experience at our go-to fast food joint or waffle house—and in both cases that means some fleeting moments of admittedly tasty, near-instant gratification accompanied by empty calories, followed by a slightly numb and sinking feeling we should have opted for something more substantial.
From “Armageddon” through “Pearl Harbor,” from the first two “Bad Boys” movies to a quintet of “Transformers” movies, Bay specializes in bombastic and sometimes impressively executed action sequences with the visuals always taking precedence over plot and character development, and you’re sure to see at least a couple of shots of a sun-dappled American flag waving in the breeze while the overwrought score pounds away. Occasionally, Bay will take on something more ambitious and relatively more creative, e.g., “The Island” (2005) or “Pain and Gain” (2013), but he’s reverting to his decades-old playbook in “Ambulance,” with characters who are about as deep as a nearly drained bathtub, an endless flurry of jiggly, hand-held closeups and swooping long shots, a casually cynical approach to violence and some mostly weak attempts at dark humor. By the last 20 minutes of this 2-hour, 16-minute slog, it felt as if someone was repeatedly tapping a rubber hammer against my temple.
