Ambulance Ending Explained (In Detail)

The ending of Michael Bay’s Ambulance showcases why the 2022 action thriller is still creating conversations. Ambulance stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Danny Sharp, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Will Sharp, Eiza González as Cam Thompson, Garret Dillahunt as Captain Monroe, Jackson White as Officer Zach, A Martinez as Papi and Keir O’Donnell as FBI Agent Anson Clark. Taking place over the course of one day, Ambulance is a relentless, high-octane roller-coaster that quite literally never slows down but instead throws a number of wild plot, character and story devices at the audience in the midst of the chase.

The plot of Ambulance comes to a head when the diversion leads Danny and Will back to Papi’s hideout, where Danny attempts to hand over Papi’s share and move on. However, Papi wants to kill both Cam and Officer Zach, as they are now liabilities that have seen his operation. This leads to a shoot out that has Will, Danny, Cam, and Officer Zach back in the ambulance, ending up at a hospital where the finale plays out with bloody consequences and emotional redemption – and the Ambulance ending explained reveals the deeper meaning behind the intense action.

What Was Danny’s Robbery Plan In Ambulance (And Why Did It Go Wrong?)

The Plan Was Doomed To Fail

In Ambulance, both Danny and Will are orphans raised by a criminal, with Danny following the same path and Will attempting to escape it by joining the military. However, now out of the military, Will’s wife is in need of an experimental surgery, which he can’t afford, so he turns to Danny for help. Danny, however, lures Will into a bank robbery to solve his monetary dilemma, which sets them both on a path of destruction and redemption.

As the bank robbery goes horribly wrong and both Danny and Will must make their escape, they find themselves taking an ambulance hostage, which has an injured cop (Officer Zach) and an EMT (Gonzalez’s Cam) aboard. With the police and F.B.I. in hot pursuit, Danny calls up his gangster friend Papi, an associate of his deceased criminal father, and has him set up a diversion to aid in their escape, promising Papi half his score in return for the help, setting the chaotic events of Ambulance in motion.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s Danny had been robbing banks his whole adult life (38 in total, including the one in Ambulance). Shouldered with a group of ex-military guys and slacker criminals, Danny had intel on a Federal Bank carrying $32 million in cash, which he and his crew are preparing to take down. Will, in need of monetary assistance from his brother, is reluctantly pulled into the heist, even though he has had absolutely no briefing on their plan or agenda.

From the get-go, Danny is obviously not confident in his crew, who are all a bit wired and odd, lacking any real cohesion or trust. Their initial insertion into the bank and taking it over goes without a hitch, but Officer Zach throws it all in disarray when he maneuvers his way into the bank with the intent of asking out a teller, having no idea that the place is actively being robbed.

The bigger problem is that the LAPD’s SIS (Special Investigation Section) is already on to Danny’s crew and are waiting outside of the bank to catch them in the act. This aspect upsets Danny’s plans before he even knew it, making his Ambulance heist doomed from the start. However, Officer Zach’s involvement is what kicks off the gunfire, as his partner, Officer Mark, sees him being taken hostage from the bank windows, prompting him to take action.

Danny’s getaway driver sees that they are made and attempts to run over Officer Mark, but ultimately ends up crashing, thereby destroying Danny’s chances of a clean getaway and forcing him to go on the run. In their haste to escape, Officer Zach is shot by Will and later picked up in the same ambulance that they commandeer, making it a perfect storm of chaos as Danny’s ill-planned and ill-fated robbery goes completely wrong.

The Juxtaposition Between The Two Is Central To Ambulance

In Ambulance, Danny and Will were adoptive brothers raised by their criminal adoptive father LT, who had ties to local gangs and brought both Will and Danny up in that lifestyle, shaping them to follow in his footsteps. LT is recently deceased at the start of Michael Bay’s Ambulance, but neither Danny nor Will seem particularly hurt over it. Instead, Danny appears to be in control of what is left of his criminal empire.

Will ended up joining the Marine’s in order to escape the criminal life, while Danny pursued it, supposedly studying law enforcement as a means to learning how to combat them. The film shows the two as kids via flashback, although never with any dialogue. They appear to be close, but their personalities couldn’t be more different.

Danny is erratic, hyper and ill-tempered, whereas Will is more calm, collected, and focused, making their dynamic together like two opposing forces. While both were raised to be criminals, only Danny has embraced it fully, while Will actively fought to get away from it. However, even as Will attempted to escape the life, the very plot of Ambulance shows that he’s someone that would choose crime as a means to an end, making him more similar to Danny than he would like to admit.

What Happened To Cam That Led To Her Being an E.M.T.

Eiza Gonzalez’s Paramedic Is A Recovering Addict

Eiza Gonzalez’s Cam was a medical student that got addicted to speed and screwed up her chances at medical school as a result, forcing her to drop out and eventually become an EMT. She punishes herself by focusing on just doing the job at hand and relinquishing all distractions, such as getting emotionally involved with anyone — be it friends, lovers, or people she’s treated.

At the beginning of Ambulance, she’s seen rescuing a little girl from a car crash, saving her life in the process. However, while having lunch with her new partner, it’s revealed that she has closed off all emotion to the job, both in personal and professional means, even telling her new partner that she doesn’t care to know him or share anything about herself, let alone hear anything about the patients she’s treated.

This plays into Ambulance when she’s taken hostage and makes the choice not only to stay when she could’ve escaped but also to do everything in her power to help save Officer Zach (and Will later in the film).

Why Will And Danny Stay In The Ambulance (And Why The Police Don’t Stop Them)

Holding Officer Zach Hostage Ensured They Could Stay On The Road

One of the biggest questions about the plot of Michael Bay’s Ambulance is why Danny and Will would stay in the ambulance and why the police wouldn’t just shoot out the tires or ram the vehicle off the road. Ambulance flimsily makes the main reason for this revolve around Officer Zach, who is aboard the ambulance and in need of serious medical treatment.

Danny knows that having the cop in the ambulance is the only thing that would keep them alive long enough for him to come up with a plan to escape. Danny simply didn’t have any kind of a back-up plan for the robbery to go wrong, leaving him to make decisions on the move. The police and the F.B.I. simply want to protect the life of Officer Zach, who they know is in critical condition, so shooting out the tires or ramming the vehicle off the road would seemingly put his life at further risk. Their fallback is to have a hostage negotiator attempt to get them to stop, while maintaining close pursuit.

What Was Danny and Papi’s Plan To Trick The Police (And Why It Didn’t Work)

Papi’s Explosives Ruined The Getaway

Towards the ending of Ambulance, Danny called Papi, a gang leader with affiliations to his father. Danny wants Papi to get him to stage a diversion by stealing a bunch of empty ambulances and park them under a bridge, which would confuse the police once Danny’s ambulance made it there and they all went off in different directions. However, Papi also set up an ambulance full of explosives, as well as a car rigged with a mini-gun that was remote controlled and went after the police.

The goal was to thwart, confuse and stall the police in order for Danny to make it back to Papi’s hideout for the money exchange. That part of the plan seemed to work, if only temporarily, as it got Danny and Will to Papi’s headquarters without incident. Unfortunately, police were circling the area, looking for any signs of them, which meant that they would be locked down there for a while.

However, once Papi said that he would have to “take care” of both Cam and Officer Zach, Will and Danny took action, killing Papi and engaging with his crew as they made their escape yet again in the ambulance, causing an explosive scene that alerted the cops and put them back on their trail. As a result, the whole plan failed.

Why Will Shot Danny And Why Cam Saved Will Afterward

Will’s Betrayal Allowed Him To End The Cycle Of Crime

After being accidentally shot by Cam, Abdul-Mateen II’s Will is in dire shape and needs serious medical assistance. However, Cam stabilizes him, just before Danny pulls into a hospital where he intends to get his brother help. When it appears that he may not make it, Danny blames Cam and decides to take her outside the ambulance, which is surrounded by cops, to kill her and then be killed himself.

However, just as he opens the doors, Will shoots Danny in the back, saving Cam’s life, whom he had sworn to protect, and ended Danny’s reign of terror. Both men are pulled from the ambulance and laid on the ground where Danny apologizes to Will before dying. Cam is pulled away and told to leave them be, but the journey has reopened her emotional side and she cares for Will, having seen him help save Officer Zach, as well as save her own life. Cam defies the police and forces them to help Will, as it appeared they were going to let him just bleed out and die.

The Real Meaning Of Ambulance

Michael Bay’s Movie Is A Tale Of Redemption

Ultimately, the Ambulance ending revealed the story is about redemption. Danny appears to be irredeemable, even if charming, as he’s a full-blown sociopathic criminal. Will, on the other hand, is a reluctant criminal, operating under the guise of helping his family, even though that ends up costing lives and infinite destruction around L.A.

For Cam, redemption comes in the form of being put through intense pressure, testing her limits in saving lives and showing that she has the capacity to do so. Not only did she save Officer Zach in a harrowing zoom-call surgery aboard the ambulance, but she also saved Will from bleeding out in the end. This allows Cam to see her self worth, which sees her visiting the little girl she saved earlier, showing that she once again cares about the effect she has, which she’s proven can be truly life saving.

For Will, redemption comes in the form of choosing to protect people even in the face of making a bad choice, which ultimately gets him the money he needs (as Cam sneaks it to his wife) and likely a lighter sentence later on, as Officer Zach says that Will saved his life, rather than admitting that it was Will who actually shot him in the first place.

How The Ambulance Ending Was Received

The Climax Of Michael Bay’s Movie Wasn’t A Selling Point

While 2022’s Ambulance was something of a critical success for director Michael Bay, many reviewers and audience-members alike felt that the story, including the ending, were far from a highlight. Ambulance currently sits with a 68% critical score and 88% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, which provides a good snapshot for how the film was received. The story of Ambulance, including the ending, are a notable reason the response from critics wasn’t higher, as the plot was a key aspect regularly cited in the negative reviews.

Michael Bay did receive a lot of praise as a director for many aspects of Ambulance. In particular, the pace and cinematography were both regularly mentioned in the positive responses. Michael Bay is a director who’s carved out a reputation for his intense action sequences, and for his ability to cram a near-unbelievable number of adrenaline-pumping sequences into every one of his movies. Ambulance delivered on these fronts incredibly well, with some critics even claiming Ambulance is the director’s best movie since 1996’s The Rock, which many cite as the film that helped cement his career.

However, when it comes to aspects of Ambulance that weren’t received well, the plot and ending are frequently noted as sub-par. For all that Michael Bay’s directorial abilities ensured Ambulance was a highly enjoyable, slick, and stylish action movie, the story itself (including its final moments), left a lot to be desired. The characters of Will and Danny were remarked on as somewhat unbelievable, and some also felt that Danny didn’t deserve the redemption he found by the time that Ambulance ended (he was still a career criminal after all, despite his motivations being somewhat more understandable than Will’s).

That being said, the responses to the story and ending of Ambulance also highlight it as a movie that leans far more into style than it does substance, and many felt that it got away with opting for spectacle over story. Viewers who went into Ambulance seeking nothing more than a solid trademark Michael Bay action extravaganza weren’t disappointed. The plot may have been paper-thin, but it had enough tension and drama to stand as an excuse for Michael Bay to do what he does best, as critic Greg Arietta excellently explained in his review for Cinema As We Know It:

[The opening of Amulance initiates] a nearly two hour, manically-orchestrated, extravaganza of destruction, absurdity, and “Bayhem.” The titular ambulance barrels down Los Angeles freeways and streets with reckless abandon, flipping over pursuing cop cars and blasting through conveniently placed vendor stalls, all the while they are hounded by a crack team of FBI agents. Inside the ambulance, tensions mount. Not only is the EMT working against Will and Danny, but if the cop dies, both of them will face life in prison. There is not only danger from outside the ambulance, but also within, and the inherent stakes baked into this high concept premise feels like a perfect match for the tendencies of Michael Bay.