Here's why Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya AbdulMateen II's adrenalinefueled action movie is more popular now than when it first came out in 2022. Michael Bay's box office disappointment is suddenly racing up Netflix's top movies chart Here's why Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya AbdulMateen II's adrenalinefueled action movie is more popular now than when it first came out in 2022. By Sydney Bucksbaum :maxbytes(150000):stripicc()/headshotb5dc24df8d5d43d1a16c9ce0e0383119.jpg) Sydney Bucksbaum Sydney Bucksbaum is a staff writer at . She has been working at EW since 2019 and is a published author.

Here's why Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II's adrenaline-fueled action movie is more popular now than when it first came out in 2022.

Michael Bay's box office disappointment is suddenly racing up Netflix's top movies chart

Here's why Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II's adrenaline-fueled action movie is more popular now than when it first came out in 2022.

By Sydney Bucksbaum

Sydney Bucksbaum

Sydney Bucksbaum is a staff writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2019 and is a published author. Her work has previously appeared in *TV Guide Magazine*, E! News/E! Online, *The Hollywood Reporter*, Mashable, Bustle, IGN, DCComics.com, Inverse, *The Daily Northwestern*, and more.

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November 26, 2025 5:18 p.m. ET

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Michael Bay in 2024. Credit:

Steve Granitz/FilmMagic

Michael Bay's box office flop *Ambulance* just turned on its emergency siren to speed up Netflix's top movies chart three years after its original release.

If you're wondering why the director's 2022 movie, which is suddenly a hit on the streamer after underperforming at the box office, there's actually a very simple explanation.

While the adrenaline-fueled, shoot-em-up crime drama originally came out three years ago in theaters (earning a global total of $52.3 million after a $40 million budget), it's blowing up all of a sudden after it was added to Netflix on Sunday. By Wednesday, it hit No. 2 on the streamer's top 10 movies list, once again proving that the good old Netflix bump is still very real and very successful for previously-released projects.**

Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II in 'Ambulance'. Andrew Cooper/Universal

Based on the 2005 Danish thriller *Ambulancen*, by Laurits Munch-Petersen and Lars Andreas Pedersen, the high-octane movie was produced by Bay, Bradley J. Fischer, James Vanderbilt, William Sherak, and Ian Bryce, with a screenplay by Chris Fedak. And it's the most Bay movie that Bay has ever made, with gargantuan action set pieces resulting in total citywide devastation and bone-shattering explosions, with slow-mo close-ups of beautiful actors in stressful situations and an impromptu karaoke session thrown in for good, comedic measure.

The movie starred Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as brothers stuck in a bonkers heist where the biggest villain is L.A. traffic (kidding ... well, only kind of). When the film begins, former marine Will (Abdul-Mateen) is down on his luck and needs a quick influx of cash to support an expensive, life-saving treatment for his wife, so he turns to his estranged (and sociopathic) outlaw brother Danny (Gyllenhaal) for help.

Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and Eiza Gonzalez in 'Ambulance'.

Andrew Cooper/Universal Pictures

Lucky for Danny but horribly unlucky for Will, Danny's about to pull off the biggest bank robbery that L.A. has ever seen — with $32 million on the line — right when Will reaches out to him for help. So Danny ropes his brother into the plan, but things go wrong pretty much immediately thanks to an ill-timed flirting session.

The brothers are forced to steal an ambulance with an EMT (Eiza González) and an injured cop (Jackson White) inside to make their escape as the LAPD and FBI chase them all across the city — through rush hour traffic, no less.

The biggest WTF moments from 'Ambulance'

Michael Bay goes full-crazy in his wildly adrenalized action throwback 'Ambulance'

The movie is a wild thrill ride from start to finish — would you expect anything less from a Bay flick? But it's also his most unhinged, turning a half-empty city (shot in the real streets of L.A., thanks to the pandemic) into his own giant action movie set.

"I said to my agent, 'God, I just want to do something. I just need to be around people,'" Bay previously told ** of the inspiration for *Ambulance*. "Because I love to shoot... [Usually] the director sits on their chair far away and they drink their coffee and lattes and they're talking through a microphone to the actors. I am not that guy. I am the guy that takes blood with a little brush, I splatter it on Eiza, I'm there holding a camera, I'm right in front of their faces. I'm there on the set the whole time. And I create this energy. And there's a word that was created, not by me, but by crew members, called 'Bayhem.'"

The director revealed he loved that descriptor for his shooting style.

***Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our EW Dispatch newsletter.***

"I think it's good because there's a reason why I do it," he added. "I shoot very fast. I'm a very fast shot-maker. I know my movie very well before I'm even there. It's in my head. I don't even have a script supervisor."

As for his now-infamous love of explosions in movies, he simply explained, "I know how to do them very, very well."

He's not wrong! Check out his latest and (arguably) greatest evidence of that in *Ambulance*, now streaming on Netflix.

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Published: November 27, 2025 at 12:38AM on Source: MARIO MAG

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