“It’s an epic, colossal thing,” says A Martinez of Ambulance in our interview, ahead of the movie’s release. Directed by Michael Bay, Ambulance stars Jake Gyllenhaal (The Guilty) and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (The Matrix Resurrections) as adopted brothers Danny and Will Sharp, respectively, who team up to steal $32 million from a bank in Los Angeles in an effort to help pay for Will’s wife’s medical bills. When the robbery doesn’t go as planned, Danny and Will hijack an ambulance, with EMT Cam Thompson (Eiza González, I Care a Lot) and critically wounded Officer Zach (Jackson White, Mrs. Fletcher) as their hostages. What ensues is a high-speed, high-stakes car chase through the streets of LA, as Danny and Will try to outrun law enforcement and figure out a way to escape.

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In the film, Martinez plays Papi, an old friend of Danny and Will’s deceased father. “Their father was a renowned criminal — he was an unpleasant dude, to say the least — and my character had a history of working with their father in some of these enterprises,” says Martinez. It’s why, in their desperate need for a way to escape the situation they’re in, Danny and Will turn to Papi for help. More than just providing assistance to the two brothers, of course, Papi’s presence ultimately peels back another layer of the Sharp family dynamic. It is, of course, what the best heist movies do: ground their stories in emotional stakes. “I’ve been doing this a long time, and one of the things you realize is that certain things have sticking power […] It was nice to see something in [Ambulance] that will stick and that [allows people to surrender] to the emotion of the moment — that’s how things worked with [Papi].”

Martinez isn’t exaggerating about the longevity of his career. The Emmy winner has been in the business for over 50 years, from working on daytime soap operas like Santa Barbara and One Life to Live to landing roles feature films like The Cowboys (opposite John Wayne) and Wind River.

When Martinez got the call to audition for Ambulance, in fact, he was in New Zealand, in the middle of shooting Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop. “I had brought my lighting and production tools because actors have to do their own auditions now,” Martinez says. “I set up the stuff in my apartment in Auckland [and] I got my son in Los Angeles to read Jake Gyllenhaal’s lines off-camera. It turned out well and, lo and behold, they offered me the gig.”

On Working With Michael Bay and Jake Gyllenhaal

     Universal Pictures

“The first thing about Michael that you get is the joy and the energy. He puts the camera on his own shoulder,” says Martinez when asked what his initial impressions were when walking onto Bay’s set. “When he was directing me on my first day, he was talking to me with one eye looking through the lens, so you have that sense of being directly connected to the vision of the [movie]. His enthusiasm and his quickness and his fluidity are singular.”

For Martinez, Bay’s style of directing reminded the actor of his early days on the set of Santa Barbara, which, according to Soaps, just celebrated the 29th anniversary of its series finale last January.“I had a director [on the series] back in the day, a man named Michael Gliona, who was similar to [Bay] in that he would compose scenes based on a certain kinetic sense. He wanted things to have a flow to them, like a dance-like quality […] and [Bay] is pretty much just like that. A lot of the times, he’d just say, ‘Okay, the camera is going to come and find you, and as it finds you, I’d like something in counterpoint to happen,’ and that was really easy to do. I trace it back to my own [Santa Barbara] roots.”

That kinetic fluidity is very much present in Martinez’ scenes with Gyllenhaal and Abdul-Mateen. You immediately get the sense that, in the small amount of time they’re together, there are entire words left unsaid. “I had built a backstory [for Papi]. You always have to build the ‘what’s going on’ in your character’s mind and what your character has been through.” What helped the most was how Bay encouraged the actors to improvise. “The [scene] is written, but when you’re doing it, anything that happens that seems to pop in the moment can be pursued, and often is pursued. A lot of ideas just come off the top of his head. He just leans up from behind the lens and posits an idea and challenges you.”

In an interview with RadioTimes, Gyllenhaal touched on the luxury of improvising certain scenes in Ambulance, attesting to going “big and wild” and giving Bay “a whole spectrum” of takes to choose from. In our interview with Martinez, when asked about working with Gyllenhaal, the actor said, “His instincts are phenomenal, and his motor is phenomenal. He gave me one particularly clear thought [about a scene] that lifted the whole thing for me. I have to give him credit for that. His idea sort of put another layer on it that [the scene] really benefited from.”

If there’s anything Martinez asks from fans, it’s that they see Ambulance in theaters. “It’s just astonishingly kinetic, and you just feel like you’re having your breath taken away. It’s an exquisite experience, and it finds a way to get into your heart, too.”

Ambulance is available in theaters April 8, 2022.