The central storytelling gimmick of the hit medical series “The Pitt” is that each episode is told in real time. One hour of TV equals one hour of medical emergencies at the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center. The stories on “The Pitt” are bolstered by this gimmick, and the series has been widely praised for the high quality of its performances. Lead actor Noah Wyle recently won two Emmys for the series, for his acting and for serving as an executive producer. 

If “frantic immediacy” is your bag, a Twitter/X user named @thamoasdeaf suggests that fans of “The Pitt” might enjoy Michael Bay’s 2022 flop “Ambulance.” The tone of “The Pitt” is drastically different from that of “Ambulance,” an action-packed car-chase thriller, but the medical setting and breathless pace might give “Pitt” fans a similar high. 

“Ambulance” is a wild, dizzying movie. The bulk of the film takes place inside an ambulance, making everything feel cramped and leaving the audience perpetually rattled. “Ambulance” was shot digitally and, according to the website Any Good Films, made extensive use of LightCraft drones equipped with cameras, coordinated by Davis Clark DiLillo. Roberto De Angelis served as cinematographer on “Ambulance,” but the actors sometimes had to hold the small digital cameras themselves to accommodate the cramped central location. 

The camera drones can fly at up to 100 miles per hour, and De Angelis and Bay flew them under flying cars, up the sides of Los Angeles skyscrapers, and then all the way back down again. Cameras float through tiny passageways. Bay is known for a very high degree of cinematographic chaos, and that chaos drives “Ambulance.” But one must admire Bay’s attempts to innovate action movie language with new drone tech. 

The plot of “Ambulance” is more of a crime thriller than a medical drama. It stars Yaya Abdul-Mateen II as Will, a former soldier who has fallen on tough times. He reaches out to his serial criminal brother, Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal), hoping to be hooked up with some quick cash via robbery. Will agrees to be the getaway driver for a bank heist, but, naturally, everything goes wrong. A cop (Jackson White) discovers the heist, and there’s a shootout wherein most of the heisters are killed, and Will accidentally shoots the cop. 

To flee, Damny and Will steal the ambulance that the cop is loaded into, and kidnap the paramedic Cam (Eiza González) working inside. The rest of the film will see Danny become increasingly unhinged in the ambulance while Will, driving, tries to keep his cool. Cam tries to escape while also treating the injured cop. There is a scene in which Cam has to perform surgery over the phone while also dealing with a ruptured spleen. “Ambulance” climaxes with a helicopter/ambulance chase down the Los Angeles River. Michael Bay, an L.A. native, makes good use of the city’s geography, and captures a certain kind of big-city dinginess that most L.A. movies try to scrub off. 

“Ambulance,” it should be noted, was an amped-up remake of an already high-stakes Danish action film from 2005 of the same name. The original film’s director, Laurits Munch-Petersen, isn’t well known outside Denmark. His most recent project was the 2023 TV series “Crasher,” based on a book by, of all people, Søren Kierkegaard.  

Critics liked “Ambulance” okay. It has a 68% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 256 reviews. But even then, the positive reviews were largely qualified. Christy Lemire reviewed the film for LAist and admitted she enjoyed it in spite of its dumbness. Nick Schager, writing for the Daily Beast, called Michael Bay a “master of maximalism,” and that it “goes for the jugular with speed-freak intensity; it makes no apologies for its immoderation; on the contrary, with every one of Gyllenhaal’s cackling outbursts and livid tantrums, one can practically hear Bay laughing with delight.” Whether that sounds like a pleasant experience or not, I’ll leave for you to answer. /Film’s own Chris Evangelista liked it.

Peter Travers, however, writing for ABC News, hated it. His opinion matched most of the critics, who felt it was “exhausting.” One cannot accuse Michael Bay of not evolving with the times and exploiting new filmmaking technology, but one can always accuse him of making bloated, chaotic action noise-fests. 

Audiences, however, were in no mood for Bay’s maximalism. It opened the same day as the hit video game adaptation “Sonic the Hedgehog 2,” and an expanded release of the eventual Best Picture winner “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” Although cheap for an action movie — “Ambulance only cost $40 million to make — it only returned about $52.3 million. 

In terms of Hollywood accounting, that’s a pretty huge bomb. It was the second Bay film in a row to lose money at the box office, as his preview flick was the 2019 actioner “6 Underground,” which played on Netflix. Of course, it’s hard to gauge just how successful Netflix films are financially. At least his goofy robot outing, “Transformers: The Last Knight,” made over $605 million. Of course, that was on a $260 million budget.