You know that old saying about broken clocks being right twice a day?

Well, you can apply that to “Ambulance,” the latest rock’em-sock’em blast of multiplex mayhem from Michael Bay, a man for whom subtle stubbornly remains a four-letter word. There’s nothing nuanced about “Ambulance”: two brothers attempt a bank heist that goes pear-shaped, forcing them to hijack an ambulance with a dying cop and a stressed-out EMT in the back and hit the freeways of LA. Much anarchy — along with lots of shouting, swearing, bleeding and stuff blowing up — follows.

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But, unlike Bay’s last effort, the tedious “6 Underground” or some of his other entries into the cinematic hall of shame such as “Pearl Harbor” or “Transformers: The Last Knight,” his over-the-top shamelessness actually works to this film’s advantage. Score one for the broken clock.

It helps that he has Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (“Candyman” remake, “Trial of the Chicago 7”) at the center of this act of boneheaded bravado. Gyllenhaal chews the scenery like a man who missed lunch but he does it so well while Abdul-Mateen II brings a certain relatability and gravity to whatever role he’s playing.

Gyllenhaal is Danny Sharp, a thief with high ambitions of pulling off a big score and Abdul-Mateen II is Will, Danny’s estranged brother, a man who left the hustling life behind to join the armed forces. Now with a wife (Moses Ingram, “The Queen’s Gambit”), kid, medical bills and no job, he’s open to Danny’s offer to cut him in on the action in exchange for helping him pull off a high-stakes robbery.

Cam Thompson (Eiza González, “Godzilla vs. Kong”) is a no-nonsense EMT who’s a wizard at keeping people alive for their 20-minute ride from trauma to hospital. She’s saddled with a newbie, Scott (Colin Woodell, “The Purge” TV series), to show around but if she thought that was the worst part of her day, she was sadly mistaken.

Meanwhile, police officer Zach (Jackson White, “The Space Between”), with some encouragement from his partner, Mark (Cedric Sanders), is working up the courage to ask a bank teller he’s crushing on out on date. Needless to say, everyone’s paths cross in a violent (and noisy) way.

Bay, working from a script from Chris Fedak, Laurits Munch-Petersen and Lars Andreas Pederson, keeps everything moving at such a rapid pace that you don’t have much time to think, “Hey, isn’t this a lot like ‘Speed’?” or “I guess someone saw ‘To Live and Die in L.A.’ and took notes.”

Let’s not even get into the whole question of realism. When one of the head cops cracks that they need to get the brothers’ speeding ambulance off the streets before rush hour, you have to wonder if the writers have even been to LA since, out there, there is no hour without the word rush in front of it.

Bay covers his tracks by keeping things moving quickly, with his cameras (and drones!) sweeping across buildings, streets and freeways like restless spirits, adding visual punctuation to a story that isn’t particularly original and has little to say beyond “boom.” The director’s one big miscalculation is the film’s 136-minute running time. If he had shaved a half hour, it probably would have been much stronger.

But then it wouldn’t be a Michael Bay film without the sweet smell of excess, now would it? And we might not have had Gyllenhall and Abdul-Mateen II cruising down an L.A. freeway while singing along to Christopher Cross’ 1979 hit “Sailing.”

Score two for the broken clock.

cary.darling@houstonchronicle.com