In the Ambulance, Comedy on Life Support

Making a decent feature length film that also accurately showcases the difficulty of a real world job is tougher than it sounds. The marketing for Code 3 sets the movie up for a high bar in this regard by framing it as an action comedy. Can any film effectively demonstrate the difficulty of a 24-hour paramedic shift that accurately describes the toughness of the job and still be reasonably funny? The surprising answer to that question is: yes.

Code 3 ★★★★ (4/5 stars)

Directed by: Christopher Leone

Written by: Christopher Leone, Patrick Pianezze

Starring: Rainn Wilson, Lil Rel Howery, Aimee Carrero, Rob Riggle

Running time: 100 minutes

Rainn Wilson, inevitably best known for his work on The Office, is the indisputed star of Code 3, going after the role with all the energy to be expected from a talented supporting actor given a rare chance to lead. But his turn as the perpetually overworked, exhausted, and rarely emotional paramedic Randy also suggests that Rainn Wilson as a man who feels genuinely grateful to EMTs for everything they do to keep the broken American healthcare system running. Although it’s not just his delivery. The script from director Christopher Leone and Patriack Painezze has an excellent eye for exactly the absurd, episodic situations a paramedic is likely to face. Did you know that nobody can die in an ambulance? As nonsensical as that sounds, Code 3 does have a good explanation.

Indeed, Code 3 goes hard on the explanations, even when doing so requires a voiceover. Though often clunky, Rainn Wilson really sells these sequences with an effective sardonic grimness, less a narration for our benefits as viewers and more as a sort internal monologue helping him to maintain his sanity. The dark humor is highly appropriate here because paramedics constantly deal with people dying — not always in the ways you expect. One of Code 3‘s vignettes presents a startlingly unnerving depiction of how paramedics have to factor in things like the potential of an officer-involved shooting when they decide whether or not to call the police for backup. In general, this isn’t a driving concern, and police function as mostly helpful background characters. One scene hits especially hard precisely because Randy is adamant that they can’t call the police, despite the danger of the situation, precisely because that danger can quickly escalate to a lethal degree if they’re dealing with a mentally ill person who can be talked down but not threatened.

Doctors are also relegated to the background here, despite their usual starring role. Rob Riggle is excellent in his semi-villainous role as the head emergency surgeon, who seems to genuinely burn with resentment about not being the movie’s main character. His consistently assholish vibe is only slightly balanced out by the fact that he’s suffering from the same burnout as our hero Randy. Code 3 is great in its willingness to depict people with stressful jobs as being, well, stressed out. If there’s any message the movie is trying to communicate to viewers who aren’t paramedics, it’s simply, please stay out of their way and let them do their job. That’s all they can really ask for at any given moment, and it’s why the moments where Randy is disrespected hit so hard. The issue is less Randy’s ego than the risk to people’s lives if he has to waste time trying to explain what’s going on to bystanders.

Randy’s partner Mike, played by Lil Rel Howery, goes a long way to showing how important the social element is to the job. More of a people person, Mike can be somewhat annoying, yet consistently shuts up and gets completely serious when there’s an actual crisis to deal with. The levity in Code 3 isn’t “comedy” in the same sense that you’re likely to see from a typical action comedy. There isn’t slapstick. There are extreme hard turns from intense medical emergencies to banter used as a coping mechanism to help Randy and Mike recover. When Mike gives Randy a hard time over the way he eats, he’s establishing a sense of normalcy and friendship that makes both of them feel a little less perpetually horrified about having to constantly deal with death. Like Randy tells us at the outset- he’s our very best friend on our very worst days. It’s hard to think of a greater moral aspiration than that, however unpleasant and unappreciated the work may be.