Ambulance Star Jake Gyllenhaal Says Director Michael Bay’s Megaphone-Smashing Days Are Over: “He Has Evolved”

Michael Bay loves blowing s*** up. At the movies, that is.

And he’s been at it for nearly 30 years, beginning with 1995’s Bad Boys. Since then, the one-time music video auteur has destroyed Pearl Harbour, Earth (almost), a couple of national landmarks, a handful of cities, hundreds of vehicles … and a few loudhailers. The latter is a necessary casualty in Bay’s school of TNT-ology: how else can the maestro get his directions across to a sea of extras and artisans amid the deafening and assaultive explosions?

On the commentary track of his 2005 sci-fier The Island, starring Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson, Bay proudly proclaimed, “Normally on a movie I’ll break about two or three megaphones.”

And this brings us to Ambulance, Bay’s 10th feature that doesn’t contain the words Bad Boys or Transformers in the title.

Set in Los Angeles (aka the Bank Robbery Capital of the World), this remake of the 2005 Danish thriller Ambulancen stars Yahya Abdul-Mateen (Candyman) as cash-strapped combat veteran Will Sharp, who’s roped into a bank heist by his adoptive brother and cashmere-wearing career criminal Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal).

And you know movie heists, they usually go off-script spectacularly. The brothers make their getaway in a hijacked ambulance with a paramedic (Baby Driver’s Eiza Gonzalez) and an injured cop (Jackson White) onboard.

8days.sg recently sat down and Zoom-chat with Bay, Gyllenhaal, Abdul-Mateen and Gonzales during their press tour in Paris. In the first video, we ask the actors, who are no stranger to action films, what sets a Michael Bay action flick from the rest of the pack. In the second video, we ask a more pressing question: how many megaphones did Bay smash on the Ambulance set?

According to Gyllenhaal, the only things he saw Bay destroying were cars, no bullhorns: “He has evolved."

Photos: TPG News/Click Photos, UIP