Sightlines · reception
How Ambulance was received
2022 · Michael Bay · Ambulance on Sightlines
The arc
Shrugged off in theaters in spring 2022 with a soft box office and decent-but-mixed reviews, it was almost immediately adopted by streaming audiences and film Twitter as lean, back-to-basics Bayhem — one of the fastest flop-to-fave turnarounds of the decade.
What’s debated
The perennial fight it fuels: is this proof Michael Bay is a genuine auteur who just needed a smaller canvas, or are the 'vulgar auteurists' overcorrecting for years of Transformers?
Its footprint
Its swooping FPV drone shots — diving off buildings and threading through the chase — became the film's signature and a much-shared talking point, and the movie winks at its own maker by having characters name-drop Bay's earlier films in dialogue.
Where it stands
A Letterboxd-era cult object: the 'actually, Michael Bay rules' entry that vulgar-auteurism fans hand to skeptics.
Did you know? It's a remake of the 2005 Danish film Ambulancen, and Bay shot it fast and comparatively cheap — a heavily improvised, pandemic-era production famous for its daredevil FPV racing-drone camerawork.