Director: Michael Bay; Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Eiza Gonzalez, Garret Dillahunt; 136 minutes.

While the UK lauds its health workers, the US gives them Ambulance, an installment with the absolute essence of Michael Bay that elevates and reduces the role of the ambulance worker to a symbol of pure and passionate patriotism. It’s both exhausting and exciting, as you’d expect and want from a Bay movie. Would ambulance workers be moved by such an award? Maybe, as far as they can feel recognizable by a film designed to give people a taste of what it’s like to take steroids.

Bay, at the age of 57, has reached the cruise control stage of his career. His style was now so bold, so inimitable, that there was something almost casual about the bombast. Ambulance seems an easy case of Bay buying the obscure Danish action film from 2005, called Ambulance, adapted it into English and then put together a 38-day shoot and a convoy of vehicles to topple. It’s impressive, but above all because of how much we know it would make Los Angeles residents uncomfortable.

Will Sharp (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) is a hero (something Bay communicated to us within 30 seconds of meeting him, when he showed us an American flag folded in his display case, next to a book with the title “AFGHANISTAN” which is stamped on the waist). Do you think maybe this person is a war veteran? Will’s wife, Amy (Moses Ingram), needs urgent surgery. So when his adoptive brother Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal) invites him to the biggest heist in history – a $32 million bank heist that dwarfs anything their criminal father has ever done – it’s hard for him to say no. Expressions of instant regret follow as Will and Danny find themselves in a hijacked ambulance with medical worker Cam (Eiza Gonzalez) and a bloody cop, while half the LAPD are on the run.

Abdul-Mateen and Gyllenhaal were irresistible opponents. Abdul-Mateen from candy man and Matrix Awakening, has the fresh and enthusiastic charisma of a rising movie star. Gyllenhaal has the restless and nervous qualities of someone who feels he’s been a movie star too long. He’s been very much into the wide-eyed sociopathy of his post-dating years. Night explorerWell, at one point she screams, with total commitment: “I wish I didn’t have herpes, but we all have to accept what we have.”

Bay has always insisted that his films are apolitical and, with Ambulance, you are very right. It’s so myopic in its focus on the innate “goodness” of Will and Cam’s actions that there’s no real context to compare it to anything else. You are not siding with one side or the other of the ambulance chase; You’re only here, inevitably, because of the chaos. And, in a very strange way, the only thing that matters is that the main character is still alive. The mass death toll of pedestrians is an off-screen concern, as the car swoops into Los Angeles’ seemingly endless supply of street stalls.

Ambulance it’s a purely aesthetic beast, made for those who like their movies to look like they’ve been edited by someone having a panic attack; for some reason, there are about 300 cut scenes consisting of nothing more than Danny telling someone he looks like Mel Gibson. Lorne Balfe’s aggressively somber music is combined with a constant stream of drone shots gliding over buildings, skidding along highways, and gliding with inhuman grace. It feels like you’re looking through the eyes of a monster that just came out of La Brea’s tar pit. Long ago, Bay fell into a self-parody. On the other hand, that’s half the appeal of these films.