In 2022 and 2023, star Jake Gyllenhaal had the rare good fortune of headlining arguably the two best movies of their respective directors’ careers. Coincidentally, he also happened to have the misfortune of watching them tank at the box office. Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant earned just $21 million globally against a reported budget of $55 million, while Michael Bay‘s Ambulance grossed a little over $50 million worldwide against a budget of $40 million. Both movies remain the top-rated of their respective filmmakers’ careers, according to the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. The Covenant is a fixture on the global streaming charts, having clearly struck a chord with its 98% audience score on RT, but Ambulance is catching up to it as we speak.
According to FlixPatrol, Ambulance was the third-most-watched movie on the domestic Netflix charts during the Thanksgiving holiday. The movie was originally released in 2022 and was hailed as Bay’s grand return to form following a largely disappointing stretch that produced duds such as Transformers: The Last Knight and 6 Underground. Ambulance was headlined by Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul Mateen II as two adoptive brothers who hijack an ambulance after conducting a bank robbery. The movie is now sitting at a 68% score on Rotten Tomatoes, where the critics’ consensus reads, “At top speed and with sirens wailing, Ambulance comes riding to the rescue for audiences facing an emergency shortage of Michael Bay action thrills.”
Jake Gyllenhaal Is Witnessing Streaming Success Across Platforms
Bay’s previous top-rated film on RT was The Rock, which is on the verge of turning 30. Ambulance also featured Eiza González and Garrett Dillahunt, and remains the last release of Bay’s career. He’s now set to release his first documentary, We Are Storror, about the British parkour group of the same name. Recent reports also suggested that he could make a return to the Transformers franchise in some capacity, now that the studio has had a change in ownership and behind-the-scenes management. Gyllenhaal has had streaming success in recent years with Prime Video’s Road House and Apple TV’s Presumed Innocent.
You can watch Ambulance on Netflix domestically, and stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
- Release Date
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April 8, 2022
- Runtime
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136 minutes
- Writers
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Chris Fedak
