Lift (2024)

By: Mike Ward on Monday, January 15

PG-13 Running Time: 107 mins

SHOULD I SEE IT?

YES

  • Fans of Kevin Hart will likely be interested in this action-influenced, Fast & Furious style heist film.

  • An easy watch, requires next to nothing of the viewer.

  • Has a sharp look, with Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Billy Magnussen giving good performances.

NO

  • This is about as generic and nothing as a movie can get. A heist movie with no intrigue and recycling scenes and moments we have seen countless times before.

  • Kevin Hart needs to be either all-in with comedy or all-in with drama. Here, he is devoid of charisma, personality and seems to just be here out of obligation.

  • I have not seen a film create so many characters and then do next to nothing with them. The hacker uses a computer. The pilot flies a plane. The disguise guy makes disguises. That is as deep as this thing goes.


OUR REVIEW

Under F. Gary Gray’s direction, Lift, the fourth Netflix film in Kevin Hart’s production deal with the streaming service, appears to, well, “lift” its look and feel from other heist movies we have watched many times before. With an ensemble cast that slots characters into one particular task, we have essentially a Fast & Furious movie, dropping cars and instead using an obnoxiously large plane. (Incidentally, Gray directed The Fate of the Furious in 2017.)

Lift is the movie with a smooth-talking leading man (Hart) whose character, Cyrus, has reached the phase in his life where he can pull off $20 million art heists, while also coordinating a fake kidnapping of a masked NFT designer, known as N8 (Jacob Batalon). Turning that NFT into nearly $90 million in profit is just another (impossible, improbable) day in the life of Cyrus and his crew. 

As they celebrate with N8 (not “Nate” of course, but pronounced “N-Eight”), three of Cyrus’ crew are busted by Interpol agent Abby Gladwell (Gugu Mbatha-Raw). Abby and Cyrus had a week-long fling once upon a time and when they cross paths, Cyrus is smitten and Abby sees him as nothing more than a shameful criminal.

Or does she?

Nonetheless, we criss-cross all over Europe and, in a situation that defies not only logic but only occurs in the movies, Interpol agrees to hire Cyrus’ crew to help steal gold bullion from a known terrorist identified as Jorgensen (Jean Reno). Abby is tasked with assisting the crew and the rub is that charges will be dropped if they complete the task and avoid Jorgensen’s plans to sink the financial markets in something of a makeshift cyber-terrorism attack.

Gray’s film looks crisp and clean. Yet, there is little else to appreciate or care about here. Hart is trying to be serious, but his dialogue is ridiculous. He spits out lines that mean nothing. “If we don’t do this, we go to jail.” and “Let’s show them what true artistry looks like.” Hart seems checked completely out, walking through the movie, only showing a glimmer of enthusiasm in his scenes with Mbatha-Raw.

Lift’s main problem is the screenplay by Daniel Kunka, whose last script was 2009’s 12 Rounds, starring John Cena. He simply seems unable to write characters with any substance. Here, we have characters identified as “The Hacker,” “The Engineer” and “The Pilot,” among others. Their dialogue largely only speaks to those tasks. Cyrus has not so much assembled a team as he has assembled ideas of people. 

This all leads to us not caring a lick about anything happening. We have all seen enough of these movies to know how everything will end. As a result, there is no surprise that comes when the truth about the heist is revealed. Like in every Fast and Furious movie, a group comes together, concocts a plan, goes through ridiculous means to complete it, and then celebrates at some location where everyone’s toasts one another and teases a sequel. 

At least Hart didn’t describe everyone as a “family.” That’s Vin Diesel’s thing. And somehow, he doesn’t show up here.

Lift is an empty, soulless excursion. There’s no real comedy. The action sequences are edited to within an ounce of their lives and a decent performance from Mbatha-Raw and a few laughs from Billy Magnussen (he’s “The Safecracker”) cannot save us from a movie that seems equally as bored as we become with the story it is trying to tell.

CAST & CREW

Starring: Kevin Hart, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Sam Worthington, Vincent D’Onofrio, Úrsula Corberó, Billy Magnussen, Yun Jee Kim, Viveik Kalra, Jean Reno, Jacob Batalon, Burn Gorman, Paul Anderson, David Proud, Oli Green, Ross Anderson, Stefano Skalkotos, Martina Avogadri

Director: F. Gary Gray
Written by: Daniel Kunka
Release Date: January 12, 2024
Netflix