Jake Gyllenhaal surprised his “Ambulance” co-star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II on the set of the upcoming Michael Bay action movie by taking the camera out of the filmmaker’s hand and directing scenes of the movie himself. “Ambulance” is based on the 2005 Danish film of the same name by Laurits Munch-Petersen and Lars Andreas Pedersen. The film marks Bay’s first directorial effort since Netflix’s “6 Underground” in 2019.
“There were times when he would take the camera from Mike [Bay] and then you look around and Jake is shooting the scene,” Abdul-Mateen recently told Esquire as part of the magazine’s Gyllenhaal cover story. “I had never seen anything like that before. I’m curious about those things, but I would never ask the director if I could shoot a scene.”
Abdul-Mateen said Gyllenhaal made the entire “Ambulance” set “his playground” during production. Gyllenhaal, meanwhile, said he always wondered what filming a Bay movie would be like, adding the filmmaker “can be brash and he can be awkward” on set. Bay shot “Ambulance” in and around Los Angeles.
“Ambulance” stars Abdul-Mateen as an army veteran down on his luck who turns to “brother” Gyllenhaal for help when he needs $231,000 to pay for his wife’s surgery. Gyllenhaal’s solution? A $32 million bank robbery.
Things get complicated when Gyllenhaal’s character, who has a checkered past, mistakenly lets a cop, who ultimately gets shot, into the bank during the robbery. They steal an ambulance to use as a getaway vehicle when the heist goes awry. Of course, it turns out to be carrying said police officer and an EMT, turning the already-complicated ordeal into a hostage situation.
Universal is set to open “Ambulance” in theaters April 8.