LIFT (NETFLIX) (2024)

SYNOPSIS: An international heist crew, led by Cyrus Whitaker (Kevin Hart), race to lift $500 million in gold from a passenger plane at 40,000 feet. 

MOVIE REVIEW:

Lift is yet another generic heist movie despite having F. Gary Gray, the director behind the brilliant remake of The Italian Job (2003).

Comedian Kevin Hart dons a producer hat and also stars as Cyrus, the leader of an international heist team specialising in stealing art and NFT. In exchange for immunity and their criminal records being erased, Cyrus agrees to work with Interpol agent Abby (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and her superior, Commander Huxley (Sam Worthington) to steal $500 million in gold from an evil crime boss, Jorgenson (Jean Reno).

Their plan is to steal the gold in mid-air out of a commercial airline in which Jorgenson’s henchmen are onboard guarding the loot. All the while with Cyrus’ teammate, Camila (Ursula Corbero) piloting a private jet underneath the airline not knowing the henchmen are planning a surprise hijack detouring their original plan.

Probably a feeble attempt to steer himself away from his usual comedic outings. Kevin Hart is not even funny here. It’s definitely a wrong move, buddy. For a movie liked Lift, it sure going to benefit from Hart’s comedic talents and timings. Alas, most of the gags relied on Billy Magnussen who plays Magnus, a safecracker and Vincent D’Onofrio who is supposed to be some sort of master in disguise. Unfortunately, both are not exactly comedians especially the latter who is totally wasted in the role.

Same goes to Sam Worthington and Jean Reno who are underused in the whole endeavour. Just because the movie needs some love to move things along, there’s some forced romance brewing between Abby and Cyrus which is dull and inconsequential.

The rest of the movie is mostly tried-and-tested with passable action sequences (apologies to veteran stunt coordinator Vic Armstrong), passable CGI and hardly passable screenwriting by Daniel Kunka. The villain is weak, unconvincing and his motive even weaker. We expected more from Hart and especially F. Gary Gray but it’s yet another disappointing action flick from Netflix. Hart is no Danny Ocean for sure.

MOVIE RATING:

Review by Linus Tee