Guns: Ambulance & Line of Duty

2022, Michael Bay (The Island) -- download

2019, Steven C Miller (Marauders) -- Netflix  

I have a tag, guns, which I rarely use. Mainly because most movies have guns, so it needs for the movie to ... use them liberally? Maybe. I just have to feel it. Maybe I need a Bechdel Test for guns, where if you remove the primarily gun play scenes, would you still have a movie? For most, the answer is maybe, but they would be MUCH shorter.

In watching these kinds of movies, I continually ask myself why. Why am I watching this movie, especially with  the latest from Michael Bay, considering I have a pretty much hate-hate-love relationship with all of his movies. He's a terrible director, and this is no exception more so it doubles-down on why I dislike him, but I actually looked forward to it. So, why subject myself to them? Why am I passing over good movies for either bad-enjoyable or even bad-OK ? At least bad-bad is usually only watched ironically. What has changed in my mind that craves distraction more than absorption and satisfaction? I don't know if you have any answers, because I sure don't.

So yeah, Ambulance by Michael Bay. I actually forgot it was a Bay(splosion) flick until I had it downloaded into Plex, just remembering it was a heist movie where the bank robbers end up using an ambulance to escape. TBH, I assumed I was going to watch one of those movies with a complex heist plan, followed by a harrowed escape in their faked-up ambulance. Adding in Jake Gyllenhaal, and it should have raised up a notch. OK it is all that, kind of, but mostly its a Bay(splosion) shoot-em up full of about a million quick cuts, slow-mo focuses on car chases, yelling, YELLING and guns. Lots of guns.

Jake (Enemy) is Danny, career criminal. His (adopted) brother Will (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, The Matrix: Resurrections) left the family business for a career in the military, and his wife needs critical surgery, that his military plan won't cover. So he returns to Danny for help, and Danny immediately drags him into an "easy win" but we have all seen enough of these movies to know that they are never easy. It goes wrong, because a cop goes into the bank to clumsily ask a teller out, and becomes a hostage. Danny and his team shoot their way out, all Heat style and Danny & Will and the cop, now shot in the belly, end up in an ambulance crewed by Cam (Eiza González, Godzilla vs Kong), a tenacious ambulance tech with a dark history.

The rest of the movie, most of the movie, is them driving around wrecking the countryside (LA), plowing through fruit stands to the right, and café tables to the left, being chased by police cars prone to crashing on their way to ... I don't think even they know, they are just escaping. And behind all of this, we have Danny and Will yelling at each other, occasionally pointing a gun at cam. Will is a Good Guy, and Danny is a Bad Guy, but they are brothers and dedicated to each other, and Will doesn't really have any illusions about what his fate is, but his wife needs the money, and Danny ... well, Danny just lost his entire crew, so Danny is just thinking about the next ten minutes. And Cam has never let a patient die, ever, so she is in it to save the cop bleeding out on the gurney.

So much is ridiculous, in a fashion only Bay(splosions) can do. Cam does surgery on the cop's belly wound via laptop and mobile phone, via two doctors offering her direction from the golf course. All while being chased by cops, all while swerving back and forth constantly. And the laptop battery goes dead. Duh duh duh duhhhhhh.

Eventually, with all hope running out, they end up at a hospital, to save the cop's 9th life with dire choices having to be made. I won't spoil it for you. 

*snicker*

Meanwhile, if it can be done, Line of Duty is actually dumber. But not in a bombastic or exciting stupid way that all Bay(splosions) flicks are, but just in a did-you-just-write-that (?!?) kind of amateurish way. The basic premise is that a knocked-back-down-to-a-street-beat (which apparently confines him to sitting on the sidewalk outside a convenience store talking sports with a kid) cop (Aaron Eckhart, I, Frankenstein) ends up going the extra mile to save a kidnap victim while dealing with an "internet journalist" (basically a delusional streamer; Courtney Eaton, Mad Max: Fury Road) who follows/helps him along the way.

With just a bit more money and talent, this could have been up there with Bay(splosion) level stupidity, but instead it was just down on the ground dumb. OK, forgive me, but I am being far more snarky than I was while watching the movie, which does have a fairly good amount of tension and decent chemistry between the two leads. But the dumb, or at the very least questionable plot choices, kept leaping out. 

For one, I wasn't quite sure about these streamer journalists, who claim to want to tell the Real Truth but keep on using the usual skeezy reporter tactics, which may say the writer had no respect for them as characters, but we are definitely supposed to be rooting for them. One line about "don't get the jab" made me wonder if someone wrote this hoping to bank on the anti-everything, don't trust The Man, Internet Wackjob crowd, but I am pretty sure the same crowd would hate these two girls. 

And while comedic when Penny, the cop, commandeers a vehicle the first time, after he has done it the third time, it just felt... weird, almost like it was an excuse to damage different vehicles. When I started noting them using the same intersections for different scenes, just shot at different angles, with different set dressing, well, I knew what calibre of creator I was dealing with.

And don't get me on the CGI effects. At some point, doing terrible CGI is no longer about budget, but about pure laziness. Just actually burn down a building FFS -- that fake fire and CGI embers were just mind boggling bad.

And don't get me started on the title card. What is up with that font and colour choice???

And yet I enjoyed the movie for the most part. No, not genre movie enjoyment, where I forgive all the terribleness because I enjoy the presentation of the specfic genre, but more the idea of No Name brand potato chips -- not great but still filling a belly. I enjoy tense thrillers and Eckhart gives enough to make his character palatable. He plays the tortured cop well.

The agenda of the movie is clear enough -- #NotAllCops -- in that despite the horrible circumstances that put Penny in this situation (he shot a kid), he is not one of those cops from all the TV news reports. He is still a Good Man wanting to serve his community. And the Internet Journalists are supposed to represent the most cynical of us seeing him for what he is, and supporting him.

P.S. Why the guns tag ?  Despite that being the lede for this writeup, I didn't mention the plot point at all. You see, the (second) Bad Guy (Ben McKenzie, Gotham) who has a rather dispensable reason, is All About the Guns, doing the (again) Heat inspired wading into gun fire scene shooting down cops and trying to kill Penny for shooting his brother (not the kid, just an earlier throwaway scene that sets Penny on this Rescue the Girl road), while Penny and Ava hide behind cars with other innocent people inside. So yeah, shooting shooting shooting. Guns.

I guess it says something about the emotional state the last few years have put us in. I need to see more heroes, I need to see more people setting aside their political agendas and believe in Good People again. Penny is going to save the girl, not because she's the daughter of his Police Chief, but and not just because he needs to save a kid, instead of shooting one, but because someone just needs to HELP, despite the consequences. And Will, the bank robber, goes against his own brother, sacrifices his own freedom, and likely his life, to get the money his wife needs, while also saving the life of the cop in the back of the ambulance AND the tortured med tech. This is why I watch these movies with all their flag waving and hoo-raying; I need my heroes.