LIFT (2024) - Mark Reviews Movies

Lift, Netflix

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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 12, 2024

One thing can be said of Cyrus (Kevin Hart) and his band of art thieves: They have developed a brand and make sure to stay on it. That doesn't have to do with their primary motive, by the way, because the plot of Lift is all about the team trying to steal, not art, but half a billion dollars in gold bars. No, their brand is all about trying to make the word "lift" a thing, as if constantly using the term will somehow set apart this generic heist story that should be a lot more fun than what we actually get.

It's strange how often screenwriter Daniel Kunka and director F. Gary Gray undercut whatever potential could be in this material. For starters, the movie stars Hart, who can be very funny—even when working with bland material—in the awkward way he exudes but constantly effaces a sense of self-confidence, but instead of letting the actor—you know—actually be funny in a heist comedy, this movie makes his character the cool-headed leader of the bunch.

Yes, actors can and should be allowed to branch out from the personas they've established and what an audience expects from them, but there's also the idea that a movie should play to its strengths. Casting Hart in a big-budget comedy and having him play the straight man to other slightly eccentric characters is forcing an unnecessary weakness on material that can't afford such miscalculations. It doesn't possess too many potential strengths in the first place.

The plot is the stuff of any heist narrative, except that the team is already together, having worked with each other for an unspecified but considerable length of time, and its members don't really need any introduction or development because of that fact. All of them are presented to us right away, with titles announcing their names and their respective roles on the team, and that's about the extent of that angle.

Apart from some mildly goofy personalities, most of the members are pretty bland, too. For example, Camila (Úrsula Corberó) is the group's pilot, and although that apparently means her role in a robbery—sorry, lift—is to operate whatever vehicle is required for the job, it's quite convenient that stealing—sorry, lifting—the gold requires her to pilot a private jet. She does so, and that's about the extent of her character.

The same goes for Mi-Sun (Yun Jee Kim), the team's hacker who gets the fun task of typing away at a keyboard and making all kinds of technological magic happen on the fly, and Luke (Viveik Kalra), the group's engineer who builds a GPS-blocking device and exits the story with as little fanfare as he entered it. The exceptions are Magnus (Billy Magnussen), an enthusiastically positive locksmith, and Denton (Vincent D'Onofrio), a sort-of master of disguise who—considering how laughable his disguises are and how unnecessary he is to the heist (sorry, again, lift)—almost feels like a pity-hire by Cyrus.

With the team present and barely making an impression, the plot revolves around them being recruited by Interpol to stop the delivery of 10-tons of gold to a notorious terrorist (played by Jean Reno), who creates various disasters in order to profit off of them. Abby (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), an operative with intelligence agency who had a dalliance with Cyrus in the past, easily convinces Cyrus to help stop the delivery, which means lifting (Got it!) the gold from a commercial flight while it's in mid-air.

Even though it runs counter to the very little we learn about the team's motives and methods, that specific premise is at least a bit promising in the kind of spectacle and clever maneuvering that would be required to pull off such a robbery (damn, so close to getting the whole "lift" thing down—sorry, again). There's not much to the process, though, except the usual and/or predictable—some close calls that make us wonder if the montages of the team getting precise with timing even matter, three rough landings, plenty of fights in different spaces of the two planes. Most of the team is sidelined for the action, as well as some flirtatious banter between Cyrus and Abby, so what's the point of including so many characters if they're just going to sit and wait off-screen for most of the plot?

The broad potential of a fun heist can be found in Lift. The filmmakers, though, don't take advantage of or actively undermine it.

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