New to Netflix from today is the heist comedy, Lift. Directed by F. Gary Gray, the film stars Kevin Hart, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Vincent D’Onofrio, Jean Reno, Sam Worthington, and Jacob Batalon, and follows the story of a team of art thieves who are recruited by Interpol to pull off a secret job.
In the movie, Cyrus is an international thief who oversees a team responsible for stealing millions of dollars worth of art. The team’s latest job involves stealing a Van Gogh painting, while at the same time kidnapping a high-profile NFT artist, and despite Interpol’s best efforts to capture them, Cyrus and Co. manage to complete the job.
But because Cyrus’ team are that good at what they do, Interpol decide they could be more of an aid than a hindrance. Rather than continually try and capture Cyrus and his friends and put them in jail, Interpol opt to recruit the group instead, so they can utilise their skills for a heist.
The job involves stealing half a billion dollars in gold bars. The bars are being transported from London to Zurich via plane, and it’s up to Cyrus and his crew to make the gold disappear.
As a general rule of thumb, Netflix movies tend to fall into two categories. On the one hand there are exceptional, interesting, or likeable pictures which are worth everyone’s time and demonstrate the potential of the streaming service (Glass Onion, Maestro, Bank of Dave, etc); while on the other hand there are watchable but ultimately forgettable films which come and go – which is pretty much everything else in Netflix’s portfolio.
Lift falls firmly into the latter category. It is an entirely watchable movie, that may fill in a couple of spare hours, but it’s largely a waste of time and money for everyone involved.
If you sit down to watch Lift, I guarantee in a day or two you will forget you even saw it. The film is bland, unimaginative, and it operates in a space where it believes it is far slicker than it is.
Heck, when a film tries to convince you an NFT is a valuable commodity, you know things aren’t going to pan out well. And while Lift isn’t awful (NFT waffle aside), it’s also not very good and it rapidly becomes yet another uninspiring offering from Netflix.
The film’s biggest problem is that it runs out of steam fairly quickly. The opening sequence involving an art heist is fine, and demonstrates mild potential, but once the main plot about the gold kicks in things begin to go south.
It then gets worse when Cyrus and Co. hop on the plane to steal the gold, as a.) the plane restricts the action, and b.) at no point does it ever feel like anyone is actually on a plane. There are seats, windows, and even in-flight drinks, but this whole sequence has clearly been shot on a sound stage, and is about as believable as me winning first place in a Cilla Black look-a-like contest.
Thankfully things do pick up a bit towards the end, when everyone gets off the plane, but never does the film pick up to the point that it becomes an interesting movie. Lift operates on one level of creativity and never moves beyond this.
The other problem with Lift is the way it wastes the acting talent it has at its disposal. Director F. Gary Gray fails to do anything with the likes of Kevin Hart, Jean Reno, or Vincent D’Onofrio, and this becomes a complete misstep.
If you’re going to put Kevin Hart in your movie, then give him something to do worthy of his time. Hart is a funny comedian, who has proved himself on screen in the past, yet here his performance in Lift is incredibly sedate.
There are no witty lines, no super-fast quips and no humorous comebacks; there’s just Hart sleepwalking his way through the movie. It’s as if someone has put him on tranquillisers and banned him from saying anything remotely amusing.
I don’t blame Hart, as the problem extends to all the cast, so this is clearly down to directorial choices, I just don’t understand why you would have Kevin Hart front your movie, then give him nothing of value to do? What is the point?!
The same can be said of Jean Reno who barely features in the film, or Vincent D’Onofrio, who is reduced to playing the least convincing master of disguise on the planet. D’Onofrio’s disguise schtick amounts to him wearing some fake face fuzz or walking with a cane, and frankly it’s just rubbish.
There aren’t many positive things to highlight in Lift, as even the material which is perfectly fine is merely adequate at best, so don’t come to these last couple of paragraphs looking for any praise, as you won’t find it. However, I will say the adequate parts of the movie at least pull it back from the brink, so that’s something… I guess.
Yeah, I’m not convincing anyone, am I?
*Shakes head*
Unless you’re the world’s biggest fan of heist movies, or you simply having nothing to do for two hours, there’s not much to recommend here. Lift is boring and unimaginative, plain and simple, and it should be far better than it is.
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