
The Jake Gyllenhaal thriller storming the Netflix charts
One major misstep was more than enough to swear Jake Gyllenhaal off blockbuster cinema for the better part of a decade, but since he dipped his toes back into spectacle-driven waters again, he hasn’t shown any inclination to take them out.
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time may have spent six years reigning as the highest-grossing video game adaptation ever made, but its hefty $200million budget rendered it a bust nonetheless. Whitewashing accusations were deservedly lobbed its way, with Gyllenhaal deciding that he wasn’t cut out for the action hero business.
In the years to follow, he’d establish himself as one of his generation’s most gifted and transformative performers before playing the villain in Marvel’s Spider-Man: No Way Home seemed to flip a switch in his brain. In the five years since the web-slinging sequel dropped, Gyllenhaal has focused his energies on being buff and shirtless.
He stepped into Patrick Swayze’s daunting shoes for the Road House remake, dodged bullets in Guy Ritchie’s action-packed war thriller The Covenant, will reunite with the filmmaker for the bombastic upcoming adventure In the Grey, and signed on for the graphic novel adaptation Snow Blind. However, no action hero feels truly complete unless they’ve worked with Michael Bay, which Gyllenhaal ticked off the list with Ambulance.
A remake of a Danish film of the same name, the story is a simple one; Gyllenhaal’s unscrupulous criminal Danny Sharp drags Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s war veteran and adoptive brother Will along on his latest heist, only for the shit to hit the fan and lead the two siblings on a wild chase around Los Angeles in the titular mode of transport, all while various threats are closing in from every side.
After dedicating far too much time to the increasingly terrible Transformers saga, Bay sought to recharge his creative batteries with Ambulance, his cheapest production in decades. It still delivers everything viewers have come to expect from the auteur, though, with the addition of a nauseating number of drone shots even adding a brand new tool to his arsenal.
It’s solid, well-crafted, and entertaining enough escapism, even if ended up as the lowest-grossing entry in Bay’s filmography by far when it tanked at the box office. Fortunately, action flicks always tend to find new life on Netflix, and Ambulance has done just that by emerging as the ninth most-watched movie on the streaming service’s global viewership charts.