“Ambulance” - La-La-Land.

It shouldn’t take long into a viewing of Ambulance for you to realize you’re getting a movie that had approximately three minutes of thought put into its screenplay. For reasons that make absolutely no sense, the title highlights the “LA” part, as if it matters even a tiny bit what city this ridiculous movie takes place in. It’s a two-hour ambulance chase. If that didn’t click for you, I’m sure it did when “Directed by Michael Bay” splashed across the screen. One fellow critic lamented losing IQ points after the film concluded, to which I replied “No you didn’t. You locked those IQ points in a safe before this movie even started.”

(SPOILER ALERT - It’s Michael Bay. Everything explodes. You’re welcome.)

Will Sharp (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) can’t get the VA to pay for his wife’s (Moses Ingram) experimental surgery. We don’t know why she needs the surgery, but she’s holding a baby and Will is a retired Marine, so we are contractually obligated to root for Will. Just ignore the part where he lies to his wife about getting the money, right before he lies to her about not going to meet his bank-robbing, adoptive brother, Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal). Should we stand or should we kneel?

At Danny’s place of business, Will and Danny quickly catch up, then Will asks Danny for a loan. Rather than agree to the loan, Danny invites Will to be a part his next bank heist. At first, Will is like “naaawwwww bro,” but Danny convinces him by revealing that all of Danny’s money has been invested in the new heist. Nevermind that Will walked through a garage filled with millions of dollars’ worth of exotic cars - would Will’s own brother really lie to him the way Will lies to his wife? Now, Will is like “yaaawwwww, bro.”

Not even ten minutes into this film, we get into the bank heist. Most heist movies feature lengthy scenes in which the plan is explained to the viewer, the various team members are introduced, and sometimes we even get montages of practice runs. Not Ambulance. Michael Bay doesn’t have time for that shit. Not when there are car chases to be had and shit to be blown up. The only things we know about this heist are the potential score is $32 million, the team is filled with a bunch of veterans with a bunch of guns, and, according to Danny, there is no way they can pull it off without Will’s help, despite Danny spending months planning the heist without Will in mind.

I’m going to dwell on this obvious lack of planning because we will be told later in the film by FBI agent Clark (Keir O’Donnell) that Danny has successfully robbed thirty-two banks, due to his father being a famous bank-robber and Danny having attended PhD classes in criminology. They left out the part where Danny was a MENSA member and captain of the chess team, but that is implied by Danny’s last name being Sharp.

We join the heist mid-progress, Danny and Will have already taken hostages, when a cop (Jackson White) knocks on the bank door. Danny pretends to be the bank manager and escorts the cop in, clearly hoping to be rid of him quickly. Unfortunately, ultra-smart Danny botches the name of one of the tellers, the cop notices, and Danny quickly adds the cop to the group of hostages inside the bank. In parallel, the bank is being staked out by an anti-robbery team who has known about the heist well in advance, but whose plan is to apprehend the thieves when they exit the bank because it’s “safer.” This concern for safety is demonstrated in the clearest of Bay-esque ways when a massive gunfight breaks out in the street. That concern continues throughout the film as car after car is destroyed during the eponymous ambulance chase (we’ll get to this in a moment), resulting in all kinds of property damage and civilian injuries. I’m pretty sure “safer” is a relative term, if we’re relating it to the invasion of Normandy.

So much of this initial action sequence makes no sense. For all of Danny’s supposed planning, why is the getaway truck circling the block in anticipation of picking everyone up at the front door when the bank has a parking garage? The hostages are going to be tied up, right? So they can’t set off alarms, right? So you guys can escape undetected through the garage, right?

And why are they robbing the bank during working hours, when downtown traffic in LA will most definitely be approaching the fifth circle of hell? What’s that? It’s before working hours? Then, why is the cop knocking on the bank’s door during working hours? Banks famously open at nine o’clock in the morning - we’re well into rush hour. Except, the special anti-bank heist team later tells us they have to capture Danny and Will before rush hour starts. All of this makes as much sense as Will firing his gun to scare the cop by pointing his gun directly at said cop and firing. Remember, we’re contractually obligated to root for Will, so ignore the part where Will is a decorated soldier who knows how to handle a weapon; he definitely didn’t mean to shoot the cop.

That entire nonsensical scene was contrived to put Danny and Will in an ambulance with a seriously injured cop and attending EMT, Cam (Eiza Gonzalez), as hostages. The rest of the movie is literally a two-hour chase scene in which Cam becomes the hero of the film, Danny screams at everyone at random intervals, a dumb chief (Garret Dillahunt) says words meant to convince us of his and his team’s awesomeness while the movie proves him wrong, the dumb chief not destroying the ambulance because of the injured cop (he has no apparent concern for the EMT) while showing barely any concern for all of the other cops crashing their cars, a tech support cop berating anyone who even thinks about getting Cheeto dust on her electronics, and not one, but two helicopters equipped with infrared tracking, following the ambulance and causing us to wonder why these idiot cops keeping wrecking their cars in ill-fated attempts to corner the ambulance. Can’t the helicopters just follow the ambulance until it stops or runs out of gas while the ground vehicles follow at a safe distance? You’re right - it sounds absurd when I say it out loud.

If there is one thing we can say about Michael Bay movies it’s that you won’t be falling asleep during them. Despite the film being insultingly stupid and featuring characters that all deserve to be punched in the crotch, you’ll stay engaged for the same reason people watch reality television - to find out what the train wreck looks like at the end. I would not hold it against anyone for enjoying Ambulance in the same way people enjoy Fast and Furious movies. It’s an adrenaline rush that overwhelms your brain to the point where you will root for Will and Cam, ignore the fact that it’s never not rush hour in LA, and laugh at the part where Cam clamps a burst spleen with her hair clip. After all, we’re contractually obligated to.

Rating: Ask for all but a dollar back because you still have those IQ points you socked away.

“The Matrix: Resurrections” - Control-Alt-Delete.

Way back in 1999, the idea of a Matrix sequel was a no-brainer. Neo had just destroyed Agent Smith, warned the artificial intelligence that he was going to set everyone’s minds free, and flew off into the sky like Superman. Four years later, the two-part sequel released and were a bit of a letdown, to say the least. We got what we asked for, but were disappointed in what we got. At that point, we realized that the original Matrix was a unique moment in film that probably should have been left to stand by itself. I’d like to think Hollywood learned its lesson and that’s why there aren’t sequels to Interstellar or Inception.

Of course, Hollywood’s lizard brain usually makes the decisions because MONEY!!! Now we have another Matrix sequel - Resurrections. And, not just any sequel, but a sequel that doubles as a remake. This makes sense when you consider that pretty much everyone disliked the sequels, so what better way to atone for them than to bring back as much of the original as possible? And, since it’s The Matrix we’re talking about, a reboot/sequel can easily be explained because <insert computer jargon here>.

(SPOILER ALERT - There is no spoon.)

In case you did not see how the trilogy ended, Neo (Keanu Reeves) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) die. Not in the Matrix, but in the real world. The film ends with the Oracle and the Architect discussing if the peace between humans and machines will last and agreeing to free any humans who wish to leave the Matrix. It’s a pretty definitive conclusion to the story, with the only untied string being a final question - if we will see Neo again - thrown in because Hollywood just can’t resist.

Decades later, the Matrix is stable and the human city of Zion has been renamed Io and filled with humans no longer worried about killer sentinels coming for them. The film opens with a replay of the original film’s opening scene. You know the one. Trinity (or a woman who looks very much like her) is in a deserted hotel room, cops bust in to arrest her, and she does the kick where bullet-time cinematography blows our minds away. Except, this time, different agents chase Sort-of-Trinity, and we’re watching it from behind a wall with Bugs (Jessica Henwick) and a hologram of Bugs’ handler, Sequoia (Toby Onwumere). This piques our interest, especially when Trinity is captured on a rooftop, rather than escaping. At the same time, Bugs ends up being discovered by an agent and another chase ensues, where she ends up trapped in a secret room with an agent. But, not just any agent, but one that is actually a program embodying Morpheus (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II). Bugs helps him escape the Matrix and into a body consisting of nanobots in the real world. Confused yet? Welcome to the new Matrix.

It turns out that many of the machines decided to cooperate with the humans and help them with various tasks like growing strawberries. No, seriously. Blueberries too. This will freak out Neo, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Neo (who is back to his ignorant human self, Tom Anderson) is now a prominent game-developer in the Matrix. He is most famous for creating the Matrix game, which is the movie’s way of winking at the audience in a quasi-fourth-wall-break kind of way. Incidentally, the movie will also make multiple references to the original trilogy in the same way, including kind of taking a dump on bullet-time. Then, the movie will tell you how Warner Brothers is forcing another Matrix sequel and, geez, we get it already.

Anyway, Tom is seeing a therapist (Neil Patrick Harris) because he is struggling to keep reality and fantasy separate in his head. Tom is also having meetings with his business partner, Smith (Jonathan Groff), who Tom also discusses his struggles with, in addition to the new game Tom is working on. A montage of days go by where we see Tom continuing to struggle, ingesting blue pills prescribed by his therapist, and having daily brainstorming sessions with his developer group about the Matrix sequel. We all know this can’t last, but we also are wondering how Tom is even alive, since Neo died in the old trilogy. Then, Trinity shows up in a coffee shop when Tom is there and we’re like “finally!” Except, Trinity is just a mom named Tiffany, with two kids and a husband and we’re like “oh, come on!”

Eventually, we get to the part where Tom is freed and becomes Neo again, this time by Bugs and Morpheus. There is gobbledygook about Neo having created a modal for them to find (the original Trinity scene), but we have no idea what that means. I work with software developers all day and I have never heard that term. But the film is going to pretend that the audience isn’t completely confused and just move on with what it really wants to do - nostalgia.

And thus we come to the real issue with this film - what is the point besides nostalgia? The nostalgia is laid on so thick that we literally see clips of scenes from the original trilogy sprinkled throughout the film. In addition to the modal, Agent Smith reappears, but as Tom’s business partner (Groff), we get a tweaked reprise of the dojo training scene with Morpheus, Neo’s body being retrieved from the battery-pod, and even the Merovingian because why not? And still we’re wondering, how is Neo/Tom still alive? And, Trinity/Tiffany for that matter.

Well, I’ll leave that explanation for the movie to give you, and you should know that it is long. Really long. And done in a way that Lana Wachowski (Lilly was not involved for this film) thought was clever, but comes off as a bit of a slap in the face to the audience. To be fair, maybe that slap was just to wake us up because the scene is just so boring. The villain has the ability to move at Quicksilver speeds and monologues while everything around him, Neo included, barely moves. It’s not a fun scene to watch nor is the monologue particularly interesting. The entire scene reinforces the notion that the original film was a unicorn.

Throughout the film, I kept wondering what the actual story was and what was at stake. The first film very clearly establishes the stakes - saving the human race. The two sequels continue with the same concept - saving the human race, with the subplot being the love story between Neo and Trinity. Resurrections does not appear to care even a tiny bit about the fate of the human race, even going out of its way to point out that there is a peace between humans and machines to the point they are literally cooperating with each other. Instead, the film really leans into the love story that was over at least one movie ago.

(Side note: one element of the story is that the machines are at war with each other over an energy shortage. This makes no sense for so many different reasons. Why can’t the machines build something that goes into space to collect energy? Are the machines reproducing themselves like humans, with no regard to resource requirements or how much the planet can sustain? Does artificial intelligence really just mean acting like stupid, selfish, violent humans?)

Convoluted story aside, maybe the most disappointing aspect of the film is that nearly all of the aesthetics from the original trilogy are gone. The martial arts and fight choreography were practically non-existent, the bullet-time is gone and even derided by the movie, and the score was both unmemorable and often didn't fit the tone of the scenes. Plus, the sheer amount of footage spliced in from the original trilogy became tired. At first it was cool, then it just felt lazy and unnecessary. It was like watching a flashback episode of a sitcom, which is always the episode you could tell was done out of sheer convenience for an easy paycheck.

Don’t get me wrong. I did somewhat enjoy going back to the Matrix and there were some bright spots. The actors not named Reeves and Moss were clearly thrilled to be in a Matrix movie. While Reeves and Moss all but sleepwalked through a script that gave them little to do, the rest of the cast was relishing a chance to be as cool as the original cast looked (especially Groff, who really made Smith his own). To be fair to the film, I’m going to watch it again, and maybe there are things I missed that will make me enjoy it more. I just did this with James Bond: No Time to Die and it was definitely better the second time around. Granted, I enjoyed No Time to Die on the first viewing a lot more than I enjoyed Resurrections. Maybe I just need another reboot.

Rating: Ask for seven dollars back for what felt like discount Matrix.

“The Trial of the Chicago 7” - A Few Good Men

As I write this, it is January 2021. A few days ago, rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol, attempting a violent insurrection of the U.S government, fueled at its core by anger, hatred, and lies. That event is still very raw for us, and in some ways, it made watching this movie very uncomfortable. It sparked a discussion between my wife and me about sympathy, and whether it is possible to feel compassion for people, no matter their methods or beliefs, who think they are doing the right thing by standing up to the establishment. I think it is possible…but there is a limit to that compassion.

The recent actions at the Capitol have been called a protest by some, but after watching The Trial of the Chicago 7, I know the Capitol rioters were not protestors. If a protestor brings firearms to a protest, they cease being protestors and, by definition, become terrorists. If a citizen attacks the government of his or her own country, they became traitors. I understand why they are upset, but I have no sympathy. There is definitely a right and wrong, and starting a violent insurrection of our government because your guy didn’t win is wrong.

The 1968 protestors, on the other hand, were at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago to protest the Vietnam War. Specifically, they wanted an end to the war in order to prevent more American soldiers from dying. From the evidence available, it seems that they were not armed and certainly did not show up wearing tactical combat gear. They were not there because they believed a mountain of lies, and evidence also suggests that they did not incite violence; the police did. So, yes, I have sympathy for them because they were peacefully protesting based on verifiable facts and common decency. That is why we view the main characters in the film as the protagonists rather than view them as the dirty hippies that they were accused of being at the time.

(SPOILER ALERT - It’s been fifty-two years and the fact that many of us, myself included, do not know this history is sad.)

Knowing nothing about the protests in the film, my main reason for wanting to watch it was Aaron Sorkin. The West Wing remains one of the best written television shows of all time and I will always watch a Sorkin film because of it. Even if you did not know The Trial of the Chicago 7 was written by Sorkin, you will know very quickly. It features Sorkin’s signature long takes and witty dialogue, hooking you instantly. It also won’t take you very long to notice the similarities to A Few Good Men, another Sorkin classic. And who doesn’t love a very well written courtroom drama?

Much of the film takes place in a courtroom, showing us the trial of eight men - Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen), Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne), Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp), Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong), David Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch), Lee Weiner (Noah Robbins), John Froines (Daniel Flaherty), and Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) - interlaced with flashbacks that piece together the events leading up to the riot and the riot itself. Yes, that is eight men, not seven. I know - I was confused too. A major part of the story is how Bobby Seale was arrested as part of the effort by authorities to stamp out the protests, even though he wasn’t part of the group that planned the protest, as well as an attempt to take down the Black Panthers (which Seale cofounded). Eventually, Seale was removed from the case and the charges were dropped, though that was by no means the end of his legal travails. He was also arguably the most memorable part of the trial, if not the film.

Seale is the first reason to feel sympathy for the group as a whole. His lawyer was in the hospital when the trial started and the judge refused to delay the trial to wait for his lawyer to recover. Even though neither you nor I are lawyers, we both know that forcing a person to stand trial without a lawyer is illegal, a violation of the constitution, and, to put it in Latin terms, horseshit. When this fact is pointed out several times by Bobby, as well as by the lead council for the other seven, William Kunstler (Mark Rylance), Judge Julius Hoffman (Frank Langella) shrugs it off without a care for the law or justice. Immediately you side with the defendants, especially Bobby, and hate Judge Hoffman with a passion.

As the trial moves along, the blatant injustice perpetrated by Judge Hoffman becomes infuriating. He constantly dismisses objections, evidence, testimony, and the law, always to the detriment of the defendants while demeaning them in the process. In addition, he doles out arbitrary and capricious admonitions, as well as contempt charges, as if he has a side bet with the prosecution’s boss. And during this whole facade, you will wonder if there is a line Judge Hoffman can cross that will cause federal prosecutor Richard Schultz (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) to finally speak up. As it turns out, the answer is yes, but it is the bare minimum and far overdue in the course of the trial.

This being a Sorkin vehicle, the defendants are ready with quick witticisms and smart retorts. Abbie and Jerry provide plenty of levity to keep the trial from becoming a medieval inquisition, though rack up the contempt charges at a brisk pace. Throughout the length of the trial, we get to know the men through the flashbacks and conversations outside the courtroom. The back and forth between the timelines works great for character building and slowly ratchets up the drama as both the trial and pre-riot events come to a climax. It’s like watching the best pieces of The West Wing hook up with the best pieces of A Few Good Men and you almost cry it’s so good.

Besides the writing, the reason why the whole movie works so well is the acting. Every line in the film is delivered with a passion that would make the actual historical figures proud. Well, maybe not Judge Hoffman. The whole point of acting is to make the audience believe the actor is the character. Langella puts forth a performance that makes Hoffman the odious and hateful person he is described as being (yes, I did some reading after watching the film). It’s the kind of performance that would make Hoffman’s mother roll over in her grave and it was awesome to behold. And that was just the tip of the iceberg. Cohen shines as Abbie Hoffman, as does Redmayne as Hayden. The two of them are at odds with each other while sharing ideals, and the exchanges are everything we love from Sorkin. As an added bonus, we even get treated to five-ish minutes of A-plus Michael Keaton near the end of the second act.

As well as being a fantastic movie, it is also an extremely relevant movie. Being released in summer of 2020, during the heights of the Black Lives Matter and George Floyd protests, is apropos due to both the film and current events putting a spotlight on police brutality, institutional racism, and people protesting to make the message heard. It will absolutely invoke sympathy in any viewer with an ounce of decency and caring for his fellow Americans. It is exactly the movie we need right now to make us see things for what they are and to remember that protesting requires truth and non-violence. It is the kind of movie that shows us we only need a few good people to make a difference.

Rating: Don’t ask for any money back, but do ask for a history book. You can handle the truth.