The Big Picture - Top Five Action Movie Scenes and the Madness of Michael Bay’s ‘Ambulance’

Episode Date: April 11, 2022

Michael Bay is back on the big screen with 'Ambulance,' a thrilling, nonstop cornucopia of explosions, car chases, shoot-outs, bank robberies, and emergency bullet-removal surgeries. Sean is joined by Chris Ryan to talk about Bay (1:00) and our favorite action movie sequences of all time (38:30). Host: Sean Fennessey Guest: Chris Ryan Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Dave Chang and Chris Ying. We are the hosts of Recipe Club. You may have listened to it before, but we are now back on the air, new and improved with the same hosts that lose every week. I still don't know what the rules are because they've changed as well. Chris, can you give a quick rundown?

Every week, we debate the best way to cook the things you want to eat. We take a user, listener-submitted recipe, and we all cook it with our friends, Priya Krishna, Rachel Kong, Brian Ford, and John DeBerry. And then we talk about what went right and what went wrong. No, I actually really don't want to do this podcast. And they are hardly our friends. They are enemies. They are enemies. It's Dave's civil disobedience. If you want to see Dave Chang in an act of civil disobedience, tune into Recipe Club where he will not follow the recipe.

I'm contractually obligated to make this podcast. But I'm here to have a good time. So listen to Recipe Club every week on the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Sean Fennessey, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about Bayhem. That's right, Michael Bay is back on the big screen with Ambulance, a thrilling nonstop cornucopia of explosions, car chases, shootouts, bank robberies, emergency bullet removal surgeries.

So today on the show, we're talking Bay and our favorite action movie sequences of all time. Who else to do it with than my adopted brother who came off the streets of LA into the home of my bank robber father only to later serve in the military and return home looking for a decent job with good pay to support his family

only to get caught up in this crazy scheme with me on a podcast. It's my brother, Chris Ryan. Hi, Chris. I gave everything to this country up in this crazy scheme with me on a podcast. It's my brother, Chris Ryan. Hi, Chris. I gave everything to this country. And this is how they repay me. Chris, today is a holiday for us. We are avowed.

I don't want to say defenders because I don't believe he needs defense. He is a defense of his own kind. We are supporters of the work of Michael Bay. Yeah. In general, I would say Michael Bay has been in a bit of a lull. We did enjoy his 2019 movie, Six Underground, which was released only on Netflix. You and I had the good fortune to see that movie in a movie theater. And I think our reception to that movie was a little bit different than the people who watched it on their 28-inch screens.

We thought it was an incredible, bracing, hilarious spy adventure film. Most people thought it was noisy bullshit. Yeah. Prior to that, he had been mired in Transformers films. You can't skip over this. You have to make people understand that he spent 10 years making five Transformers movies. It was a very strange choice by him. And in some respects, it robbed us of one of the maestros of action filmmaking.

And I'm here to say today, Ambulance is his official return to the throne. This is his 15th movie, and it is an absolutely absurd movie. You and I saw it together at a screening earlier this week. And it was... How many times do you think you and I turned and looked at each other, eyes bulging out of our heads, like, can you fucking believe this shit just happened? I almost high-fived you a couple of times. And there were a couple of times where I think I let out an audible, blah! This is Michael Bay flying a fucking drone into Christopher Nolan's house and just being like, happy Easter.

I'm back. I've been resurrected. And it's the most fun I had in a movie theater since 2020. And I think it might be the best chase movie I've seen since Fury Road. So Bay is in this fascinating state. He's in his 60s now. And this movie, and I'll briefly describe the plot of this movie. And we will be spoiling some aspects of it because it's just impossible to talk about its bizarre majesty

without getting into some details but it's about two adoptive siblings turned bank robbers who hijack an ambulance and take two first responders hostage

those two are played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Jake Gyllenhaal in a truly unhinged performance Bay is now in this self-referential mode in this movie characters reference

The Rock and Bad Boys and Armageddon yeah Bay is now in this self-referential mode in this movie characters reference the rock and bad boys and Armageddon yeah Bay Abdul Mateen's character has the same name as William Fickner's character in Armageddon Colonel Willie Sharp literally characters in cars discuss the movie the rock and mistake the rock for the actor the rock which Michael Bay also worked with in his movie pain and gain Michael Bay is the alpha and his movie, Pain and Gain. Michael Bay is the alpha and the omega of action filmmaking in the last 30 years, for better and for worse. He, of course, has a pretty tough reputation, I would say, for making brain-dead, kinetic, all-over-the-place, set-piece-oriented movies.

You and I have given ourselves over to them, and it's interesting to watch him at this stage because in many respects, this is his most stripped down movie in a long, long time. It is a car chase movie and it is hugely thrilling, but it's smaller. And it's back to where he belongs, I feel like. It's an urban set thriller. And I feel like that is what he does best. If you look at The Rock, if you look at Bad Boys and Bad Boys 2,

those are the movies where I feel like he is actually strangely able to show off his chops significantly better than something like Transformers or even Six Underground. So why is the filmmaking in this movie better or a return to former? How would you describe the way that Bay makes the movie? Well, I think that he's able to actually

make you feel things physically. Like I think for all the leaps that we've made in digital VFX, for all the leaps that we've made in digital VFX, for all the amazing things you may see in any given blockbuster at any given time over the last few years, it often doesn't feel like an ambulance is about to hit you. It doesn't feel like a car is about to flip on top of you.

It doesn't feel like you've been thrown off of a roof and are descending down into a bank robbery scenario. A lot of it may have to do with the narratives of the stories that they're telling. So you may have a situation where you're just watching a tree and a raccoon going off to battle

Thanos, and that might not feel real. But this, for all of its insanity, feels very real to me. I mean, there are car chases in los angeles i've never seen one quite like this but this movie is for as referential as is to bay is a deeply deeply referential movie about la there's a lot of shouting out about different roads they're taking what highways they're taking even past hugely famous uh sort of car chases and bank robberies in la itself and so so in my head, I was kind of

thinking this is really his LA movie more than anything else. And I think probably for the two of us as Bay fans who live in Los Angeles, there was an extra kick to it. But if I had to distill what it is he does that's so special, he's the guy who might blow up his movie star. He's the guy who actually puts people pretty much in harm's way. Not really, but it seems like that's really an explosion. It seems like that's really a squib blowing up right by this person. It seems like that car really hit another car. Yeah. One of the interesting things about this film, if you read a bit about the production of the movie, is he seems to have loosened his grip a little bit. In the past, Bay is well known for a kind of authoritarian filmmaking style.

He's a little bit more of a John Ford than he is, I don't know, a Barry Jenkins. And in this one, it seems like he was more open to improvisation than ever. In some cases, he even handed the camera to Jake Gyllenhaal to shoot because a lot of the film takes place

in these incredibly closed quarters of the back of an ambulance. And to your point, it very much is his LA movie. And it also is very much his response to, I think, a decade of action filmmaking. So the movie overtly references heat, clearly is inspired and riffing on Collateral and Training Day. And that's really the triumvirate, I would say, of LA crime movies in the last 20 years. Would you agree with that? Yeah, there's a bank robbery, and they're stuck in a car, and it is kind of like this two-hander of who is going to kind of come out on the other side of this relationship. There's also a direct homage to the T2 LA River Basin chase. I can't recall another scene quite like that movie. And it really felt like, as I was watching it, like Bay saw Tenet,

particularly the first 20 minutes and the final hour of Tenet, and was like, uh-uh, I'm in charge. You can't do this. You can't, this is my corner. And the choices that he makes with this movie are different than the ones

that he's done in the past. And it's largely him either being a slave to or attempting to take over technology so many drone shots in this movie oh my god the the camera is is like a seagull it's honestly i so there's two things happening one i 1000 agree with you that this is michael bay being like i want my crown back i think that there are direct responses not only to the filmmakers that you mentioned but to uh chad stileski and david leach to the fast and furious directors uh i feel like he is like anybody who tries to do this

nolan like all the guys who are trying to make action movies right now or aren't making action movies like cameron this is what this is what i do you know on the flip it's also like i think he maybe watches a lot of like youtube videos where where a lot of drone stuff is happening i don't there are a lot of drone camera youtubes like where you're you're like oh and then we flew over this castle and we flew it over this and i think he kind of kind of, there's drone footage in TV and movies, but not like this, not invasive, not like where the drone shot itself is a character. And what it does is create this really dizzying, really kinetic sense of the world is turning upside down while these characters are in this situation.

He has this ability to physically transport you and thrill you like you described earlier. There's something physical about the experience of watching his movies. I thought A.O. Scott had a very insightful piece about this movie. Strangely, you wouldn't think he would draw out great movie criticism, but in fact, Michael Bay has drawn out lots of great movie writing. Scott wrote about this movie, Bay's virtuosic flouting of the laws of physics, probability, and narrative coherence is meant to catapult you into a zone of sublimity where melodramatic emotion and adrenalized excitement fuse into a whole new kind of sensation. I think that's about as clear and discreet a description of what Bay's mission is. The downside, and the reason why I feel somewhat ridiculous to compare Bay to Michael Mann or to Christopher Nolan, is that Michael Bay's not great on story. He's not great on picking

projects that have great scripts. He's not great on crafting character. And I think one of the reasons he's clearly derided is because he tends to make these kind of cookie cutter portraits of figures that are dutiful, but forced to do things that they wouldn't otherwise do in their normal lives. This movie is as guilty of that as any movie he's ever made. This is not a realistic portrayal of two brothers. It's not a realistic portrayal of a bank robbery. It's not a realistic portrayal of a car chase. It is not a there's not no no depths of the soul in this movie.

It is pure experience. And I think that's okay. I'm completely, I feel unencumbered by typical movie criticism in terms of engaging with his movies. I don't either. Whether or not this is a repeat viewing, and I just want to stress in case we need to, because we'll talk about the music and some of the set pieces coming up. But please, if you're able,

go see this in a movie theater. Sean and I had honestly perfect seats. I usually sit on the aisle. We sat right in the middle. And I feel like I got a haircut during this movie. I could not believe how intensely loud it was and how much a part of the chase you feel if you go see this on a big screen with

giant crazy speakers the problem with bay is that he doesn't say you know what like this is going to be almost like a um like a french new wave crime film where we're not even going to address who the guy and the villain are he really gets into the relationship of Danny and Willie or will the two characters and go so far as to make like weird propaganda films about their childhood. Like that get intercut throughout the movie where they're seemingly like two boys living in the 1950s wearing Chuck Taylors and sitting on the hood of Studebakers and flying paper airplanes,

even though I think they would just be kids in the 90s at this point. I don't know when they would have grown up, but not that long ago and definitely not on the set of Hoosiers, which is what it looks like they grow up on. Then he adds on a whole other layer where their father, who we are never introduced to nor see in flashback or anything, is a master bank robber. And then on top of that, there is all these other familial storylines that are driving it. Now, you

could just say, this guy has a wife who needs money. He's got a brother who's a thief. They go into business together for one time only, and then everything goes wrong. That's all you need to know about the setup. But he adds on a ton of... I'm in my

Terrence Malick bag right here and it's really stupid. Thank God. Then he starts throwing drones at people's heads and brings the cartel into it and it just goes from there. Well, it's even deeper than that because this is a true hat on a hat movie.

So it's the kind of movie that is unafraid 40 minutes in to introduce a new character, 60 minutes in to introduce a new character, 80 minutes in to introduce a new character. We have traditional uniformed law enforcement in the movie. They play a big part. One of the cops is taken hostage. Then we have plainclothes S sis tactical swat team cops then we have an hour and a half into the movie a fbi agent who is in marriage counseling who also we learn has a relationship to one of the bank robbers then we meet uh poppy yes the the LA cartel, which develops an incredible scheme

to maybe or maybe not release Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen's characters during their car chase, mid-car chase. Then we have Jake Gyllenhaal's personal assistant played by Wale, who is deeply incompetent. Yeah. There are a lot of people in this movie. There are a lot of characters in this movie.

It is unafraid to overload you with the scaffolding of storytelling. It's not actually storytelling. It's just here's a guy, here's a guy, here's a guy. It's basically like an Armageddon where like the Russian cosmonaut shows up like an hour in or like this guy shows up and then they find out that the only person in the whole world who can do this is this guy who's over here. And you're just basically like always resetting the thing that this movie has that he maybe hasn't had since armageddon honestly is an engine uh you know the rock obviously has the engine the missiles appointed

san francisco the armageddon has an engine the comets coming at the earth part of the problem i mean honestly like the transformers movies are one of the most remarkable digressions and blips. Do the Transformers movie have any cultural imprint now? He spent a decade making billions of dollars off those movies for, what, Paramount, I guess? For Paramount, yeah. And does anybody ever reference them? Does anybody ever talk about them?

Does anyone ever reference them? Does anybody ever talk about them? Does anyone ever revisit them? I will, and I have, defend the first Transformers movie, which I thought was worth making, which I thought was a worthy experiment in that kind of CGI. And I think he did it

insofar as you can do a good job with the Transformers movie. He did a cool thing. He did a cool thing. The fact that he then devoted the next 7 to 8 years to those movies is bewildering now he took breaks in between movies like Pain and Gain did he take another break? I thought he

just made Transformers movies other than Pain and Gain I thought he made Pain and Gain and was like oh it's not working I'll just keep making Transformers movies maybe that's the problem maybe he didn't take enough breaks maybe because he was maybe if he treated this more like uh the way that john ford treated westerns where he was like you know this is my metier but i'm gonna do it over the course of 30 years we might feel differently about it i don't think that the transformers michael bay never made his how

green was my valley well maybe this is it honestly maybe this is the summation of all of his feelings this is i mean it's truly how sick was my drone you know i had a i had a distinct memory after this movie after i interviewed uh bay back in 2011 i want to say um i had to drive from the east side to the west side to go meet up with him i can't i think we met up at his gym and we met up at the lobby of his gym and i got lost on the way because i wasn't living in LA at the time. And I found myself trapped on trying to shift from the 105 to the 405.

And this movie, I would say, does not have a lot of respect for the geography of Los Angeles. There is not a lot of traffic. There is not... I mean, there's a convoy of police cars clearing out the true but even in the earliest stages of the film now of course they are in an ambulance so they can turn on their flashers but still realism is still not really in michael bay's grasp or interest set i

would say you you had a problem with the traffic it was the traffic that bothered you. Not like when 70 cars seem to arrive in a open parking lot full of piles of concrete that they all flip off or smash into. Because I don't know about you, but if you looked around Los Angeles and seen, is that like the place where they built SoFi? They just started driving around there or something. One of my favorite things about this was the multiplicity of food stands that were smashed into. Dude, come on. You know he had to do it to us. So much exploding fruit. He had to blow some fucking mangoes up.

There's one point where they're driving through the LA Convention Center parking lot or underground of it. And everything that's being delivered, it's quinceanera dresses limes everything is like the most colorful beautiful thing that just gets fucking run over uh let's talk about the music a little bit i was uh reading some criticism of the movie and people described lorne balfe's score as overheated and too obvious. And let me just tell you that that is an incorrect opinion. Get the fuck out of here. What do you want from life? Did you want Charles Mingus to be playing

while they're doing this? I don't think I'm necessarily as familiar with Lorne Balfe as I should be. It does seem like he has been the composer of choice for Bay for a number of years now. And this feels like the summation, especially during the opening stages of The Bank Robbery. The film's music is just a series of pulsations. It's like an orb

is bubbling. It's like, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, for like 20 minutes. And I want to say it's radical avant-garde art. I really, really thought it was amazing. It's fucking incredible. It also is just, it's a character in the movie itself. You know, you talked about the Jake Gyllenhaal filming some of these sequences. This is a very claustrophobic movie in a lot of ways. Because even when they're outside of the ambulance, even when the camera is outside of the ambulance, it's either vertiginous,

like it's drones flying all over the place, or it's very like... I mean, the pace of the editing here cannot be overstated. I don't think a shot lasts for more than three seconds, if that. My dad used to call that frame fucking, where everything starts with a guy bursting into a room or a car

driving across. Everything always starts with a moment of action in a Michael Bay frame and that's why you always feel like when you get out of one of his movies your adrenal glands are exhausted, like you have thyroid problems afterwards because it's always

moving. Everything is movement. But when you combine that with no wide shots and basically this intense claustrophobia, and then you put the BALF score on top of it, which is like being in a Slovenian nightclub until 3 a.m. on speed, it's really, really, really... We came out and we were like,

let's get drinks. We need to come down from this. I think the thing is that Bay has always been doing that. He obviously has more technology. and we were like, let's get drinks. We need to calm down from this. I think the thing is that Bae has always been doing that. He obviously has more technology at his disposal to pull it off. But furthermore, the culture has caught up to him.

It does feel like looking at your phone, except if your phone was 80 feet tall. Yeah. And I guess he's been derided for that historically, that fast, quick cut editing style as being, you know, with his origins in commercials and music videos. A lot of people have described this movie as one long trailer.

I think it's a very clear artistic choice. Now, whether you want to accept that Bey is an artist or not, it's kind of immaterial. It's something that he has been developing over years and now has at his disposal this incredible ability to capture a lot of high octane action footage very quickly with small cameras so he has so much footage to pull from so many of these movies in the past were so reliant on these huge sets and this very slow moving frame he's talked in the past about his impatience with the slowness

of the big movie machinery. The drone work in this movie is the something that can happen within five seconds. You can get an incredible shot from the top of a skyscraper all the way down to the pavement in five seconds. And he is on, he's so willing to exploit all of these new tools. It's really fun to watch somebody kind of just push the envelope.

Now it might give you a heart attack. Like it's, if you, if you have a heart condition, you probably should not see this movie. all of these new tools. It's really fun to watch somebody kind of just push the envelope. Now, it might give you a heart attack. If you have a heart condition, you probably should not see this movie because it is pushing it so hard. But I genuinely think it's an incredible achievement. Now, he combines the technological leaps of everything we've done. I've not been a part of this development process. Everything people done with like these drone cameras and like with making cameras smaller faster and 4k and being able to do and also like the mass distribution of it so that people who are like yeah i like to go to croatia and jump off cliffs and film it you know like that's that's now like kind of into the film lexicon the film language like of what they bring to movies, but what Michael Bay does that nobody else can do is he's like, I know the stunt guys. I know the explosives riggers.

I know the drivers. I know this is my guy I like to use when I blow rocks up. And he brings them into that using that camera and is like, what if we flew the drone under the ambulance as it flips over? That's the thing that the guy on youtube or basically everybody else in the world can't do they can't figure out how to do that i will say this film is a bit long yeah we haven't even said isa gonzalez's name yet we haven't uh she plays

the emt who has the hero of the movie yes who has a stormy backstory she's taken she's one of the people who's taken hostage as well as a police officer who's been shot there who has a hero of the movie. Yes. Who has a stormy backstory. She's taken it. She's one of the people who's taken hostage as well as a police officer who's been shot. There's also a lot of kind of thorny conversation we can have about what this movie's politics may or may not be. I tend to think that aside from a kind of obvious billowing American flag nationalism, Michael Bay doesn't have a lot of politics. You'd think in a movie like this this there would be some discussion about power

and law enforcement and it seems like at first no police officers for example are going to be uh killed on screen yeah and then that pretty radically changes and then our empathy and sympathy with the main characters shifts pretty radically over time depending on who is in the center of the frame aiza gonzalez is really is really the only person who we're meant to sympathize with fully and completely throughout the story. Yes. Even though she's the person who has a dead heart. That's something that's told to us over and over again.

Not literally. No. No other characters do have dead hearts in this movie. Aiza Gonzalez plays this EMT who's got tough luck past. She shut herself off from the world. And yeah, you kind of feel like maybe she's going to be the... I mean, not the hero of the movie,

but basically the plot engine of the movie. And she actually winds up, for as much as she does in the film, kind of like... I don't think she gets sidelined as much as she does in the film kind of like she she's i don't think she gets sidelined as much as she's just like a almost like an avatar for the audience in the ambulance of like what the fuck are you guys doing um as far as the violence goes i agree with you there's this really weird thing where like half the movie is like you know thousands and thousands of machine gun rounds go off and you're like has anybody actually gotten shot like this is kind of weird and you kind of

think maybe it's going to be this weird like trying to get a pg-13 rating on heat and then that changes pretty radically in the third act i don't want to spoil too much of the third act but um it shifts and so because of that and because there's such an incoherence in some of the third act, but it shifts. And so because of that, and because there's such an incoherence in some of the storytelling, which is pretty common in these Bay movies, it's a little hard to apply at least intentional political ideology. Instead, what you get is just pure emotional expression, like we're talking about, and fun sequences. This is just fun sequence after fun sequence after fun sequence, and they're strung together on this daisy chain of incoherence. So why don't we just pick out a couple of moments from this movie that we loved. Now, the first one that came to mind as I thought about this little exercise was a surgery.

A bullet removal surgery, which I alluded to, in the back of a ambulance that is in the middle of a car chase that is executed by an emt and a bank robber while using i guess facetime facetime but also some kind of situation where they can upload his vitals to like a screen share so i guess we've got that technology going for us. Aiza Gonzalez contacts her ex-boyfriend who's not happy to hear from her. And she explains to him

that she needs to take a bullet out of a cop's chest. Spleen. And then she, that doctor calls two surgeons. Conferences in two guys from a golf course

who are trauma surgeons and are like, word, let's get after this. Like, I could definitely imagine calling you while you're at a golf course and are like, word, let's get after this. I could definitely imagine calling you while you were at a golf course and being like,

whatever thing you think you could help me with and you being like, God damn it, Chris. I'm one under. What would be an example of that? Like an emergency podcast? An emergency edit.

Yeah, like Sean. So that sequence is truly incredible. It is gasp-inducing. It is thrilling. It is really exciting. And it is also very funny. This movie is very very very funny. This is where I let out my big gasp. And this is also, this will separate you know, this will separate

the wheat from the chaff as far as viewers in this audience. If you go along with this, you're in for it. If you can't handle it, I don't blame you. Should we tell, can we say what happens in this scene or you want to make sure people... I'd like people to get to guess. Let's just say that Michael Bay applies the rules of yes and. Everything that you think, when they're like, I really hope this doesn't happen, it happens.

What's a moment that blew your mind from this movie? Well, I mean, I think that it's worth talking about Jake Gyllenhaal. And Jake Gyllenhaal has a specific moment where Aza Gonzalez hoses him down with a fire extinguisher and he basically looks like he's just jumped into a bag of cocaine, which is good because that's also what seems to be happening with his performance throughout this movie. And it's been a while since I've seen someone truly embrace the madness of being in a Bay movie.

You know, like I think that sometimes there are actors who try to like keep their cool in a Bay movie or try to like act like try to like bring some sort of like emotional truth to it. Gyllenhaal clearly is addicted to working with extreme filmmakers and putting himself in extreme situations. And he does that throughout this movie. He is a totally believable action star in this movie. He is a totally believable villain in this movie. He is a pretty believable brother and friend in this movie. But what he really is, is he's out of his fucking hat throughout the entire thing. So crazy.

The second he shows up and bay shoots every character and every dialogue scene uh with a steadicam running around at a low angle so everybody seems like they're six foot five so everything is a 360 pan but looking like absolute motherfucking rock stars and gyllenhaal like lives in that. He is like, I'm wearing a black turtleneck and I am robbing banks and driving ambulances. And at one point she hoses him down with a fire extinguisher

and he is all caked in white. And he's like, oh, it's Kashmir. And you're just like, yeah, Jake. At one point later in the movie, he exclaims after someone tells him something he's not happy about. I wish I didn't have herpes, but that's life. Which is, he's really going for it. So, you know, this year is the 10 year anniversary of End of Watch,

which I see as the true demarcation point in Jake's career. Yeah. That's the movie that he made with David Ayer where he decided, also a movie largely set in Los Angeles that takes place in cars, where he decides- He loves Los Angeles.

Nightcrawler? Yes, he does. But that's the movie where he decided that he was going to take the safety off, that it was time to just go full crazy. Yeah. In the subsequent to that, he makes Prisoners,

Enemy, Nightcrawler, Southpaw, Nocturnal Animals, Okja. What's the Boston Marathon movie? Like, yeah. Stronger,

Wildlife, Velvet Buzzsaw. He plays Mysterio in a Spider-Man movie. He was in the Guilty last year. In every one of those movies, there's something wrong with him. There's something wrong with him. And I don't know why he's attracted to those characters but he is so he had so much fun playing them and in this movie there's there's there's really something wrong with danny sharp

you know he's he's he is a nutty bank robber and the son of a legendary bank robber and he he understood the assignment and that's part of what makes the movie such so fun um another movie that uh another moment that was genuinely shocking to me and was even more shocking when you told me who this actor was was um when that fbi agent that we talked about shows up at an hour and a half in the movie and i guess he's a he runs the bank robbery division of the fbi which i guess is a division. For sure. Yeah. I've applied a couple of times, but there's some holes in my resume. This actor is named Keir O'Donnell. Uh-huh.

And he reveals after a long speech about understanding Danny Sharpe's motivations that in fact, he and Danny went to college together and are friends. Yeah. Which is like truly self-aware. Oh shit.

It's on now, action movie making. A lot of fun. But this is made even better by the fact that Keir O'Donnell, the actor, is in fact who? He's the younger brother from Wedding Crashers that falls in love with Vince Vaughn and paints him. It's one of the most amazing castings I've ever seen.

It's incredible. i haven't seen him since then and he's great in this movie and really the whole thing with him being friends with uh danny sharp they went to the university of maryland together yeah they studied criminology yeah and danny had only gone there as like a mole to like gather information on how people pursue criminals and then he disappeared after sharing a bottle of Rose with this guy. That's actually why I studied journalism was just to study you. Just to get close to me. This guy is like this.

Here's the twist. He used to be my friend. And the entire time, it just creates a moment, a world in which Garrett Dillahun, who is essentially dressed like Lincoln Riley, the head coach of the USC Trojans,

he just wears all USC gear, even though he is in charge of the SWAT team going after the bank robbers. It just exists as an excuse

for Garrett Dillahunt to be like, your buddy is about to get a lot of people killed and then he goes, they're not my friends! It's just, that's the entire,

it has no dramatic reason. It's just so that those two guys can scream into each other about it you you have to have a certain level of foreknowledge going into a movie like this for example cops hate fbi agents this is something we've learned from watching action movies for the last 30 years problems yes and so because of those problems we get moments like dilla hunt calling kira o'donnell doogie hauser and kira O'Donnell replying, I don't know who that is, Boomer. Yeah. This is the kind of generation gap comedy that I come to Michael Bay Films for. Any other, another moment you alluded to, about midway through the movie,

a phone call is made, and the person who picks up is a man, a character named Poppy. Poppy is standing on the roof, claims to be watching this car chase somehow. I'm not really sure how. It doesn't seem like he has a perfectly unencumbered view of all of Los Angeles, but he's watching the car chase.

Poppy is played by the legendary soap opera actor A. Martinez, an iconic figure. There is an additional plot about how Poppy apparently owes the Zetas, the cartel in Mexico, money, hence setting up why he may betray Danny.

But ultimately, that's where this movie goes from this is like a straightforward chase movie to what the fuck is going on? Is this an urban war film? Because there is a whole other component where this gang, Poppy's gang, takes on the

cops. And it is honestly batshit what they do. It's completely crazy. It is the Michael Mann bookend to the opening bank robbery too. In terms of the noise and the intensity and the number of shells that are unloaded onto the ground of the LA streets.

This is a remarkable film. Is it a good movie? I don't, you know. Hey, so we're doing this on Friday. This is going to come out on Monday, right? Yeah. I saw it in Bellany's newsletter. He was like, we'll see doing this on Friday. This is going to come out on Monday, right? Yeah. I saw in Bellany's newsletter, he was like,

we'll see if this makes double digits at the box office. That's crazy to me. And if it doesn't, does that spell the end of Michael Bay as a big time filmmaker? I really hope that that's not the case. It's sort of strange with everything going on

in terms of wanting certain filmmakers to be seen. And, you know, you see like Mike Lee be like, I can't get $2 million to make a movie, you know, please fund my movies. And we're like,

it's important that Michael Bay gets $40 million to make Ambulance 2. But it is kind of important to me that movies like this exist, because like, I think part of the reason why we like it so much is we're sitting there and we're like i am never gonna have to care about these people ever again that's no way i have to know anything about them like we're never this is not part of like a larger franchise this isn't about anything else but these two motherfuckers trying to get across la i that's such a great insight one it is not a part of an eight part mini series that we're tracking over the course of two One, it is not a part of an eight part miniseries that we're tracking over the course of two months to,

it is not an investigation of the human soul. I think it's a sincere movie in a lot of ways, but who really cares what the characters, it means nothing. I do think it is representative of Bay's like full transition into the old guard. You know, it is a movie that feels like somebody who was making,

it feels a movie that feels like it was made by somebody who was making movies in the nineties in a way that say the fast and furious movies really do not they feel like movies that are made with with computer-generated images in mind you literally can't make those movies without computer-generated images he seems to be challenging himself here to use as little vfx as possible a few people have noted that this movie has very short credits because there's not a lot of VFX work, which is so interesting. But I think, you know, Bay is, he's a craftsman, you know, and he innovated for a long time.

And so there's something fascinating about him kind of going into his dotage as far as whether or not he's going to keep making these movies or not and whether he can. I mean, open a movie

against Sonic the Hedgehog 2 at your own peril. You know, like that's the thing is we've had three and a half months of no good movies in movie theaters with the exception of the Batman. And now for some reason, Ambulance is opening opposite Sonic the Hedgehog 2, which is probably going to do big business. And if it fails, I'm not sure what that means. I mean, these are in a weird way. This also falls into that category of they don't make them like this anymore. It know, it's an original story

or at least based on a Danish film. And it features movie stars prominently. And it's an old school chase movie. So, if people don't show up for it,

it will continue to confirm this anxiety that people have had for the last few years. I don't know. I hope Bay just keeps getting to make movies. The fact that he made this movie

for $40 million is a miracle. It looks like a $100 million movie. I also don't understand when people are like, oh, we really wanted to shoot in LA, but Vancouver had to do because tax breaks. It's like, how the fuck did Michael Bay make this for $40 million? And how did you and I not accidentally get hit by an ambulance shrapnel

on our way to get dinner one night? It seems like the best thing about this movie is I think some filmmakers would be a little bit cowed by not matching skylines or not having the weather didn't look the same during this day. He doesn't

give a shit. It's twilight three times in this movie and then it goes back to the middle of the day. Their gas tank seems completely full all the time. That's never an issue where it's like, we're running out of gas. It just kind of reminds me of Speed in that way. It's just sort of like this awesome... I hope people check it out just because, you know, the theatrical experience is important

for a lot of reasons, but I think it's also really important for movies like this because this is what it feels like to be on a roller coaster and you can't do a roller coaster from your house. I completely agree. This is a strong recommendation for Ambulance,

a movie you can watch and never think about again and have a great time. Absolutely thrill ride. real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. So it did make me think about my favorite action movie sequences, in part because there's about 90 consecutive minutes of action sequence in this movie. It's very rare in that way. And we can pick and choose kind of those little moments

that we enjoyed, but it feels like a nonstop break. And action sequences are hard. I think sometimes me, you, and Amanda get on this show and you and I start going into weird cinematography language of action construction and her brain turns off. But I think she does have some respect for the craft of pulling these things together. It's really hard to manage dozens, if not hundreds of people and make them fit in the frame and their work fit in the frame in a way that excites audiences. So I thought we would pick our favorites. Now, this was the hardest thing you've ever asked me. This was really hard.

That's what I was going to say. This was because I think in some ways it has the same nostalgia flattering experience of so many of the top fives we've done on this show where I can only think back to the first time I saw things and how it made me feel. These are such visceral things. So what was your process for figuring out what your favorite action sequences are? I challenged myself to at least have some stunt work within these scenes so if i hadn't i think that's why i would probably just fall back on that was just sick and have the shootout from heat the shootout from sicario the shootout from wind river the shootout from hold the dark like like i would

just have a series of like completely gnarly shootouts i do have a shootout in my list but i feel like it was sort of like a summation of everything that had came before and also created everything that would come later. I also want to say just briefly that just because an action sequence is great doesn't mean it comes from a great action movie. And just because there's a great action movie doesn't necessarily mean it has a signature action sequence. I will also say this is just not like top five. You could do top 500. There are movies in here that clearly belong to that. There are movies I did not include that clearly deserve to be represented that I just didn't pick because I wanted to have an

interesting list. Yeah, I had the exact same experience. I wanted to have a list that was honest, but also representative of wider taste that I have um not we don't have a lot of older films on the list i think in part because as cinema gets older and older and the technology improves there are some things you'll watch an action sequence say from a clint eastwood movie in the 70s the enforcer for example is a really good clint eastwood action movie it's a dirty harry movie but the shootouts are not as good as the shootouts in Heat. And it also had me thinking about the different kinds of action sequences that we get. Now, Ambulance is interesting in that it encapsulates almost

all of the different types that we get. Not all of them fully, but most of them. We get shootouts, we get car chases, we get bank robberies, but we don get say lord of the rings style epic battles uh-huh you know we don't get um the indiana jones style escape you know there we don't get the um i guess like the the sort of like the break-in you know and i have a break-in on my list so i wanted to also have a list that kind of represented the many different types of action sequences that we had so yeah i mean i i did not really include any battle sequences, although I think you could make the argument that the opening 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan or the first scene of Gladiator or the Battle of Helm's Deep or whatever,

those major, you think about all of Black Hawk Down that are these incredible set pieces. I don't know. There was just something about war or battles that I was like, it's kind of cheating. You know what I mean? I had the same reaction. Yeah. It feels not right. And also, those are historically done with VFX. Saving Private Ryan is probably one of the only ones out of those that is not done with VFX. And so because of that, it does feel like a little bit of cheating. Now, I do have VFX on my list, but it's with a purpose. Why don't we just start? What's your number five?

My number five is the hospital shootout from Hard Boiled. Sean, did you know that John Woo's Hard Boiled is not available for streaming anywhere? I did know that. So this shootout, which happens in one of my favorite

cop movies ever, John Woo's 1992 Hong Kong classic with Chow Yun-fat and Tony Leung, shootout which happens in one of my favorite cop movies ever john john woo's uh 1992 hong kong classic with uh chow yun fat and tony lung happens in a hospital hallway and it is essentially a summation of all like gun shoot like shootouts and movies up until then and then is a predictor of everything that would come after so So it's this balletic gunfight that happens in a hospital between two cops and then a bunch of guys coming after them.

And it references everything from Peckinpah and De Palma and then winds up predicting John Wick and The Matrix and everything that would kind of come after it in terms of like its use of different film speeds, its use of stunt work within a gunfight. It kind of transcends. It's like kind of not gun violence. It's more like dance, but it is. It's fucking great. And I just am so mad that this is not available for people to

check out. It's's funny this movie is actually it's on youtube though you can you can easily see it it is on youtube this movie is actually playing at the new beverly this weekend in los angeles so by the time people hear this it will have already played but um it's one of the great shootout action movies of all time it's the last movie that woo made before coming to america to make hard target with van damme and to make um broken arrow and face off and Go on This Run and then Mission Impossible 2. Obviously, one of the action greats of his time,

but his Hong Kong work, for the most part, is not available here to see. It's hard to find physical copies of A Better Tomorrow or The Killer or Bullet in the Head. I mean, these are really great movies that if you were hanging out in video stores, not Blockbuster, but like independent video stores

in the 80s and 90s, you were tracking these movies down. And when Tarantino broke in the 90s, he was just basically like, it's him. Like, this is where I get everything, you know? Yeah, he's so influential. Such an amazing filmmaker.

I feel like, did I read that he is coming back to make another film in America? I think he's making another action movie. I don't know what it is, though. Yeah, I think it's called Silent Night. I think he's coming back to make another film in America? I think he's making another action movie. I don't know what it is though. Yeah, I think it's called Silent Night. I think he's coming back to the States to make a movie. Okay, my number five is not loud, not violent, not... It is intense. It's the Langley computer hacking scene from Mission Impossible. Now, De Palma obviously influenced by all of the masters. And one of the reasons I wanted to put a De Palma sequence on this list,

I could have put the baby carriage in the Untouchables, for example. But the reason I wanted to do this one is because it's like a summation of all of the anxiety that he's able to build. There's actually some really great anxiety producing sequences in Ambulance. I don't think anything quite on this level, but tension is a key part of an action sequence, waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting for things to blow up or to explode or to break. Part of what makes the sequence so good in Mission Impossible is in describing how the system works in the CIA, we see what could happen if a droplet of sweat falls onto the floor and sets off the alarms. It doesn't actually happen, but we get a visualization of how things can go wrong.

So we know that the tension is at an all-time high. Also, an amazing physical performance by Tom Cruise, where he is sort of balancing the break-in. And we're looking at Jean Reno holding Oh my God. more simple a little bit more quiet and that also is like is very much about the mechanics of editing and shooting that show that this work isn't just about explosive exploitation that there is real craft in it so also mission impossible still like literally one of my 20 favorite movies ever yeah just amazing um my number four i guess is the polar opposite of that because it's just dudes busting each other's asses uh i wanted to have something from one of the Raid movies. The Raid 2 is, in a lot of ways, one of the most amazing films I've ever experienced, but also is kind of almost incomprehensible in places. So the sequence I'm choosing from the Raid 2

is the prison riot, which happens about midway through. The main character is in jail, if I remember correctly, to protect the son of a mafia boss. Let's just say, I think some guys in this scene experienced some trauma.

I think that they're going to be working through this for a long time. It's basically a full-on prison riot that takes place in a rainy mud field mud patch where waves and waves of uh prison guards keep arriving and then getting beaten up it is the most violent thing probably on either of our lists so i would say it's not for the faint of heart if you haven't seen the raid movie i would say go see the raid one it's a lot more like straightforward and and you know charles holmes was talking about it on the watch the other day because he'd watch it for the first time he was

like i was having a religious experience watching this movie uh but i wanted to have something because i think that the gareth evans movies are kind of like as good as they get right now in terms of action movies um and even the shootout he does in gangs of london uh in the safe house is pretty pretty immense. But this, yeah. I mean, the prison riot and the raid, I had to include that. An incredible one.

My favorite moment from that sequence is the bathroom stall fight. Oh, yeah. Was when Nico is trapped in the bathroom stall and then fights his way through 100 people. This is like seven and a half minutes long. It's pretty extraordinary. My number four is a counterpart to that. It's

the hammer in a hallway scene from Old Boy in 2003. This is on my short long list. Yeah. Yeah. Park Chan-wook film about a guy who is mysteriously kidnapped and imprisoned for years and then suddenly released in a kind of neo-noir plot unfurls from there. But upon his release,

he basically has to battle several thugs in a single take hallway shot. And I'm always fascinated by the specificity of the choreography in moments like this because he basically,

you know, this character only is holding a hammer and he's fighting off these guys. And the more times I watch this scene, the more times I'm looking at everybody who is not the star, the person who is not in the center of the frame and wondering what they were told

they should be doing. Like about their character? Not about, no, not about their soul, you know, not about their family history. No, no. More like, when am I supposed to attack? Timing. Like the timing of a sequence like that seems so difficult to pull off and every time it looks realistic that's the thing that blows my mind is it looks like it's actually happening as opposed to so many fight sequences

in fast and furious movies or whatever where you're just like vin diesel break man head with fist and so it's like it's, it's a practical effects sequence. It's really, it's really, really exciting. And then it does have this great cut where at the end of, as he makes his way through the hallway, a door opens and it reveals more thugs waiting in the hallway,

but he smiles and he's clutching the hammer. And then there's a hard cut and the elevator opens. And then we see that he has also dispatched. He's the rest of these thugs and that he's just a killing machine who can't be stopped. I mean, Park Chan-wook makes amazing action movies in general. He also makes incredible erotic thrillers and dramas. And he's got a film coming up that I think is debuting at Cannes this year.

So he's back after a long stretch. I know he made one of your favorite TV series of all time as well. But I look forward to getting his movies back in the world. Cool thing about old boy. And I think one of the reasons why you and I are drawn to this is that, uh, action sequences remind me a lot of follow, like being a fan of action sequences reminds me of being a fan of music where you can sometimes hear albums or songs that, you know, will change everything going forward.

And when I saw the hammer scene in oldboy, I was like, oh yeah, they're going to have to think of a new way to do fighting now because this has kind of upped the ante. And that would happen in rap. You would hear a beat or you would hear a new MC come through and you would just be like,

ah, well, Kendrick's here or Push is here or somebody's here. And you're just like, if Wayne is rapping like this, everybody else has to up their game. If they're making fight scenes like this, everybody has to get better. I feel that way about a couple of more

sequences on my list, actually. So that's a great metaphor. What's your number three? I wanted to have something from Big Jim, from Jim Cameron. Bated breath waiting for Avatar 2, man, whenever you're fucking ready. Well, can you go back in your gym bag?

What did Jim say on the set of your pick here? ready uh but well can you go back in your gym bag you know like what what what did jim say on the set of of your pick here how did how did he describe how he wanted the sequence to play out so here's the thing that jim does is sometimes the action sequence is not about the action and i wanted to have something where it's like it's not all about bodies flying all over the place or explosions or violence the thing that's great about the first hive attack in aliens is the sound so um in case you don't remember like basically these marines have gone into a colony to save a bunch of like space colonists where there doesn't seem to be any living person around they're looking around they're told they have to not use their nuclear machine guns,

sick invention, because it will set off the reactors that are all around them. So they've only got pump shotguns and handguns and strong language, as one of the Marines says. And they're tracking movement with these trackers that he uses so well throughout the movie, the sound and like, and it's Paxton, it's Behan,

and then Sigourney Weaver is sort of watching them from a truck on a screen, and they can see that there's movement all around them, but they don't know where it's coming from and they don't know what's going on. And the tension that builds up until the first Marine gets yanked into the wall by by an alien and then all the aliens start jumping out and making those crazy like shrieking elephant

noises is just like it's almost unbelievable but i wanted to have something here that was an action sequence that goes right up to the point of action this is the important part uh yeah that sequence reminds me a lot of um going and grabbing my daughter when she won't sleep at three o'clock in the morning actually it's very very similar noise that she makes um amazing scene i think that's the thing is not all of these have to be explosive cameron though he is also really really good at the explosive i feel like he also kind of modernized explosions. I'll get to that very shortly. My number three does have VFX in it.

Probably still, to me, the single most impressive feat of computer-generated imagery. It's the T-Rex escape from Jurassic Park. Rewatched this on a giant TV last night. Still looks amazing. We're on the

30-year anniversary of Jurassic Park. Do you, I mean, it still plays, right? Like, that's just like a dinosaur is there. It is perfect. It's shocking how perfect it is. And there is that,

there's that 10% of practical where you see the, you know, the molding of the T-Rex's head like bashing into the car that is not VFX, or if it is, it doesn't really look like it.

It looks like a Stan Winston creature makeup that actually makes it seem more real. The fact that they built something and then they were able to blend it so seamlessly. The part of what makes this scene great is something very similar, I think, to what you're describing

in the hive attack in Aliens, which is you're just waiting for the bad thing to happen it's all about the weight and then once it happens you know like one of the you know the the accountant basically gets eaten and nobody else really suffers although the kids are kind of they get trapped inside the park after that but you know the obviously the the shimmering water as the t-rex stomps is the most memorable scene from that but the the way that Jeff Goldblum's character and Sam Neill's characters interact with each other, the flares and the waving of the flares at the T-Rex, the way that the T-Rex responds to the flares, the way that the kids protect themselves with the glass shield, the windshield when the

T-Rex bashes his head through every single step of pacing, cutting, and writing. There's a lot of really good writing in that sequence is what makes Spielberg kind of like not just in a league of his own but in a in a in a galaxy of his own when it comes to these things I mean you know he's the template you know what I mean like it's not even like he's borrowing it's like he's creating the language that people would use to show this stuff so that's that's my number three. What's your number two? So I cheated a little bit and put two together. I have the tanker assault from Road Warrior and the beginning of the chase from Fury Road. I wanted to have something with vehicles just in the spirit of ambulance. And it's interesting to watch these together because obviously, I think Fury Road, when it

came out, everybody was like like it's so real you know it's like it's these guys are really driving you need and then they did all this stuff to create the the background almost the the painterly backgrounds of of of the of the scenes and so there's this amazing combination of VFX and practical effects and then you go back and watch Road Warrior like that's just real. There's nothing about this that is at all tweaked. He was kind of doing this 20, 25 years before he made Fury Road or however long ago before he made Fury Road. George Miller is really probably up there with, I guess, Friedkin and Frankenheimer and a couple of other people of the best car chase vehicle directors out there in film history.

And I don't know, do you have a preference between the two? Are you just like a Fury Roadhead or do you like Road Warrior? I didn't grow up with Road Warrior. Okay. No one showed that to me when I was a teenager.

And so because of that, I think I'm much more interested in Beyond Thunderdome and Fury Road because those were the ones that were obviously Beyond Thunderdome was on TV a lot when I was growing up for sure and and Fury Road is just one of the great was one of the great movie going experiences of the last 25 years but I obviously I have a ton of respect for like you know you talked about invention and kind of what Spielberg invented. And I think that this kind of like antic road movie, you can see the influence and the Coen brothers and Sam Raimi and a ton of

other filmmakers who I love are like, you know, borrowing and biting what George Miller does. I mean, George Miller also still active in his eighties has a movie coming out this year called 3000 years of longing and is planning and plotting another Mad Max movie. That is so crazy that he's still doing it and still doing it at this level. So, um, I guess Fury Road probably

my preference out of all of them. What's your number two? Number two is another movie that probably was inspired by George Miller and has gone on to inspire many movies, including the movie that we just talked about for 40 minutes on this pod terminator two truck chase sequence the t-1000 is chasing edward furlong through the alley river basin and then the terminator arnold schwarzenegger shows up on a motorcycle it's kind of hard to watch this scene and not see the reams and reams of homage and parody that have come after it but this is to me the this is the native son. This is the original sin. This is the thing where the iconography of action movie filmmaking that starts in the 1990s really begins at this specific moment. It's not that James Cameron didn't have incredible moments

before this and the Terminator and Aliens and the Abyss. It's not that there wasn't Steven Spielberg stuff. It's not that there wasn't, like you you said the Sam Peckinpah's in the world but the shift from perfectly blending VFX with pure practical filmmaking happens here when the truck hits the skid and flips it's really happening

you can see literally insulation from the inside of the truck after the roof has been ripped off when it hits the divider. It's real shit. There's detail in the mess. And in addition to it being really exciting and the big explosion behind Arnold

and Furlong when they're on the motorcycle after the truck blows up was something that has been parodied even in commercials starring Bill Simmons and Jalen Rose. That's become a trope at this point, but this is the thing that builds the trope. This is the thing that builds the

cliche, so gotta pay homage to it. Yeah, this was... You could pick so many different Cameron ones. You could pick the True Lies bridge explosion. You could pick so many different ones, but I'm glad we both had them. Okay, what's your number one? So I went with the... I don't know if this is a little bit unexpected but i went with hit me from dark knight i went with the harvey dent prison trans prison prisoner transfer the entire

sequence is amazing but specifically like because we were talking about um the batman recently uh you know and i re-watched Dark Knight. And I didn't have high expectations for it. I really wanted to watch Ledger. And I wanted to watch because I was curious to compare Joker and Dark Knight to Dano and the Batman. And I think I just remembered everything I felt when I first saw this movie and when I first saw the truck flip. And this sequence, the reason I put it at number one,

and I think maybe it's controversial, but I just think it kind of summarizes a lot of what I love about great action sequences. There's actual drama to it. There's stakes to the actual scene where it's like, is he going to get away with it? Or is Batman going to kill him? Because there's always this thing where it's like,

why don't you just kill this guy instead of trying to arrest him? And then there is the Joker trying to do something seemingly impossible, but then having a plan for it. And when they finally get to the point where Batman's riding a motorcycle full speed towards Joker driving a truck at him full speed, that's just basically pure filmmaking at its very, very best. And then he flips the truck. And that's basically the coolest thing I've ever seen in the last 25 years where you're

just like, Nolan really just flips this truck and it looks beautiful. Like it works within the context of the movie. And yeah, I just thought, thought like no one needed to be represented here because i think he thinks in scope you know i think he thinks in scale yeah i there's there's an amazing symmetry to that shot when it flips that i i don't it's one of those i still don't know how they did it moments um i'm obviously not afraid to be critical of christopher no one movies but he also is really on the short list

of people capable of extraordinary sequences of this kind. I think some people probably would have put, say, the gravity shifting hallway scene from Inception on their list.

The wave coming in Interstellar. Interstellar, yeah. He's really a master of the grand scale stuff. And like I said, I thought of Tenet as I watched Ambulance. Aidan of gilling saying where's bane why does he wear the mask

uh yeah no one is truly a master um what's your number one is that a weird number one do you think that no it's like what you're describing is the wow factor. Yeah. You know, when you're in a movie theater and you're like, I can't believe this is happening. Yeah. And no matter how you feel about the Dark Knight or how representative it is or is not of the history of action movie making,

I had the same reaction to you as that scene, which is just like, God damn, that just took me away. That just took me out of my body, out of my life. But it still has actual drama. When Ledger is stalking towards that motorcycle coming at him at full speed and he's just like, come on, hit me.

Yeah, no, it's a part of telling the story of the movie. No question. My number one is a little bit of a cheat because it's a 35-minute sequence. But it's probably the most excited I've ever been in a movie in my entire life. It's the Bride vs. the Crazy 88s

in Kill Bill Volume 1. Hell yeah, brother. Now, here's what's good about this scene. Everything is good about it. It basically gets to stand in for an entire history of fighting films,

especially, of course, kung fu films and the huge influence that they have on Quentin Tarantino. There is direct homage to Bruce Lee in the Uma Thurman costume. There's direct homage to, you know, the Shaolin films by having Gordon Liu be one of the crazy 88s. There's direct homage to a lot of the Shaw Brothers movies and the Chang Cheh movies and the Five Deadly Venoms. There's all kinds of reference points if you love those movies and know about them. So I cite this sequence as kind of representative of my love for all of these movies, which I was turned on to largely by following Quentin and listening to Quentin talk about how much he loved those movies. And also the RZA and Wu-Tang, which is

a huge thing for us. And if you listen to the Wu-Tang in the mid-90s, you were constantly hearing snatches of dialogue from those movies and trying to figure out where they came from. But the sequence is something else, too. It's not just homage. It is like a leveling up. It is

also a reference to the incredible wire work that started to go into this stuff. And also Quentin taking on mass scale in a movie, something he had never done before and saying like, I have... You need to emphasize this. He directs Reservoir Dogs.

That's got the shootout in the flashback of like them getting the diamonds out. There are some sequences in... Like there's some shooting sequences in Pulp Fiction. There's obviously all the stuff with Butch getting in and out of the building to get his dad's watch back and everything. There's Jackie Brown, which has basically no action sequences. There was no precedent to say that Quentin Tarantino could make an operatic action movie

the way he did here. And there are a number of amazing moments that you know the battle early in the movie the fight sequence with vernita green the vivica a fox character is also breathtaking but it's brief and it's intimate this is a this is a video game style sequence it is bad guy after bad guy big bad after big bad coming at the bride and it takes tons of artistic uh leaps you know the film switches from color to black and white at one point it switches from color to sort of like neon shadow at one point it changes locations multiple times it features water sequences it features like i said wire work and stair work it features uh crazy weaponry the the arterial spray is absurd and hilarious the choreography of course is is breathtaking the stunt work by zoe bell filling in for uma thurman is extraordinary

like it is it's like the magnum opus for me. It's my favorite version of this thing. And I turned it on last night. And it was 1234 a.m. when I turned it on. And I was like, I just want to see this for like a minute, just so I can get a little feel for it. And I watched the whole thing. I watched 35 minutes. Some people come down with Top Chef. You watched the crazy 88's fight.

I know. And then I slept peacefully. I slept calmly. So, you know, I think of this sequence as a representative of not just, you know, the work that Quentin did. And he obviously went on to do other big action sequences, you know, explosions and inglorious bastards, for example. Death proof.

Death proof, yes. So he obviously has an incredible facility with this stuff. But this one, you could feel him challenging himself and meeting the challenge in such a profound way while also paying homage to all of his heroes. So that's it. Those are our lists. Any honorable mentions? I think it would be kind of

we would be remiss. People will get annoyed at this. We didn't put anything from The Matrix on. And I think it's worth mentioning that when I saw The Matrix, I was like, well, action movies have changed forever

as has filmmaking, as has the way I will conceive of people fighting or whatever. So you could take any number of scenes from Matrix. Do you have a favorite physical scene? I think Neo and Trinity entering the hotel lobby or the office building lobby fighting or whatever so you could take any number of scenes from matrix do you have a favorite i think neo and trinity entering the hotel lobby or the office building lobby and the shootout there

uh when they set the metal detectors off but you could do trinity's escape to open the movie you could do the end where neo is like i'm neo you know like you could take any number of them. I think also the subsequent movies went in a direction of surreality that kind of dampened my enthusiasm maybe for some of the bullet time stuff. And it's also been ripped off so much, which a lot of these movies have. But I would just say that The Matrix, obviously. And then there are a bunch of action movies

where it's like, Die Hard might be the best action movie ever made. I don't know if there's any one sequence from Die Hard that I think is iconic. I mean, jumping off the roof is pretty big, the helicopter attack, et cetera. But I don't know if I would be like, man, that Die Hard scene changed everything.

It's more like the movie itself is what kind of stuck. Yeah, I thought about this with a lot of the older films too. I mentioned Eastwood, and Eastwood obviously made almost exclusively action movies for 10 years. Yeah, Schwarzenegger movies, yeah. Yeah, a lot of those movies they don't always have the the sequences that I'm looking for here um you know we didn't really mention Star Wars Star Wars actually famed

so what would be your Star Wars one well I'll tell you I didn't see the originals in theaters obviously I did actually when they were re-released but I didn't see them the first time around so um it probably would be the Duel of the Fates in episode one, which is not really a great movie, but it is a great fight. The prison barge escape in Jedi where it is the backflip. Yeah, that's pretty great. That is pretty great. I don't know.

There's two guys in their 40s talking about Star Wars action scenes. I want to say the card sequence from Solo. You know, when we see Lando's backstory. That's probably my favorite action sequence from those films. Woody Harrelson's hair in Solo. Solo rewatchable. Actually, Solo has an incredible train sequence. A robbery sequence.

Ron Howard. Yeah, Solo has some decent stuff in it. You know, there's another one I thought of that it felt like a little odd to put it on a list like this but the kind of the opening 20 minutes of

Children of Men when the siege happens on the car and the car is driving backwards that's a pretty amazing piece of work I felt the same way I was like you know

the last scene of Captain Phillips like there's stuff where you're just like yeah that's like that was gripping there's something I was looking for

a certain soul of the sequence though. Like a certain like this had stunt work, this had violence, this had maybe some special effects but it also had tension and I don't know. Like I was trying to find the perfect thing but you know you could go back to like the Flight of the Valkyries and Apocalypse Now

is like an incredible sequence. Do you think that the CR heads will be disappointed you did not include the bank heist and shootout in Heat? No, but I think I explained myself. You know what I mean? I think a pure shootout, even though you could say the bank robbery in Heat updated that kind of thing from Hard Boiled, I still was trying to rely on a couple of extra elements.

What is your favorite action sequence from the Fast and Furious films? You know, I've only seen one of them. Which one? Tokyo Drift. What'd you think of that one? I mean, all the drifting was sick. Remember I made drifting jokes for like nine months then?

I do remember that. How does it stack up to Tokyo Vice? Tokyo Vice is pretty good. I hope you check it out. Does it have a lot of action sequences? So far, none. None? None. Is it a lot of action sequences? So far, none. None? None.

Is it a lot of knitting and crocheting? What are they doing in that show? There's a lot in between that. A lot of human experience that you can have besides knitting and crocheting

or action sequences. There's like a fist fight so far. There's been a couple of deaths. There's been a lot of threatening. That sounds riveting. Um, okay. Well,

Chris, this has been, uh, illuminating as always. Would you would say that people should race out to the theater with, with, with, with great vigor to see ambulance.

I would say that if you like action movies, I don't know what you're waiting for. Wonderful. And maybe you and I are guilty. Maybe we're the boys who cried wolf. No, you know, maybe we're the boys who cried wolf no you know maybe we're the boys who cried six underground no i i know we're like the people who are like our democracy is under assault you know and it turns out it wasn't we're liberal panic twitter but for action movies we're the hashtag resistance but for pay

and people are just tired of it, man. Okay. This is a fine place to end this episode. Thank you, Chris. Really appreciate you. Chris, where can the listeners find you on the Ringer Podcast Network? I host The Watch twice a week with Andy Greenwald.

I am on The Answer on the Ringer NBA show. And I'm a frequent guest on movie podcasts like The Big Picture and The Rewatchables. Well, thank you. Listen to Chris on The Ringer Podcast Network. Thanks to our producer, Bobby Wagner, for his work on this episode. Sort of the Michael Bay.

The Michael Bay of this episode. You know, he's orchestrating and also allowing himself to be spoiled, which is very kind of him. Stay tuned to The Big Picture later this week. We're finally diving deep on one of the year's best movies. It's Everything all at once a long conversation about that one we'll see you then