What’s worse, chaining your movie to a plot so dated that it involves NFTs, or having a character explain what an NFT is? Ultimately, the new Netflix movie Lift does both. Starring Kevin Hart and a host of others whom you’d recognise as ‘that guy from that thing’, Lift plays like a particularly cynical concoction of a late-period Fast & Furious film and a mid-2000s heist movie set in Europe.
It’s no wonder, then, that it is helmed by F Gary Gray, a Hollywood journeyman who has directed one of each in the past. But while The Italian Job was a mostly enjoyable romp, his The Fate of the Furious was an overblown mess marred by infighting among the film’s two lead stars. Gray also couldn’t catch a break with his last film, the failed franchise-starter Men in Black: International. Making the movie was reportedly such a traumatic experience for him, he attempted to bail on the project on several occasions. It’s anybody’s guess if he had a better time on Lift, because audiences probably won’t.
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Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Abby, Úrsula Corberó as Camila and Kevin Hart as Cyrus in Lift. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2023
Hart plays a suave thief named Cyrus Whitaker, who is roped into performing a high-stakes mid-air heist by (and for) the Interpol. Cyrus routinely steals art, but he isn’t above describing what he does — thievery — as an art form in itself. He’s a bit of a softie, Lift appears to be saying in between its CGI-heavy action set-pieces, most of which, it seems, have been filmed against a green screen backdrop in somebody’s living room. Since a lot of the movie — the main heist, at least — takes place aboard an Airbus A380, Lift is able to get away with it. There’s a certain tactility to these scenes, and Gray’s handling of the hand-to-hand combat is surprisingly dynamic. But then, he can’t resist cutting away to fully computer-generated shots of aerial acrobatics involving two planes.
The villain of the piece is an arms dealer-type played by Jean Reno, with the energy of someone who has been yanked to set after having ice water sprinkled on their face while they were sleeping. The French veteran appears in about two scenes, and probably didn’t set a foot outside the controlled environs of a film set. The villain’s motivations are murky to the point of being non-existent, but the movie skirts around these niggling concerns by having one its many characters occasionally scream something about saving the world (!), or stopping terrorists (!).
For some obscure reason, Hart has been cast in the straight-man role. Here’s a talented comedian who has made a career out of playing wildcards — on his resume, he has two Jumanjis, two Ride Alongs, and two films for Netflix alone in which he offers live-wire support to stoic performers — but Gray has attached him to the sort of character that you’d expect someone like Bruce Willis to have played in the 90s. But Hart is also a producer on this thing, which might not mean anything, but could explain why he’s playing a lead role he clearly isn’t suited for.
Oh, and none other than Sam Worthington — star of two of the three biggest movies in history — appears briefly as a conniving Interpol agent, only to whisper lines like, “Get me NATO.” Aesthetically and tonally, Lift is one drone shot away from turning into earlier Netflix tent-poles like Red Notice and The Gray Man. Each of these three movies is emblematic of this growing trend in post-pandemic big-budget cinema that absolutely refuses to allow real conversations and real locations to sometimes creep into the frame.
Kevin Hart as Cyrus, Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Abby and Billy Magnussen as Magnus in Lift. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2023
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The romantic subplot in Lift — yes, there’s one of those, too — is about as flat as the chroma work in the film’s climactic showdown, during which Cyrus projects incriminating CCTV footage of the villain doing villainous things on the belly of a wrecked private jet. In a goofier movie, this could’ve actually been fun. Imagine Hart, of all people, running around a villa on the Amalfi coast, trading bricks of gold for the freedom of the world. Imagine how exciting landing an A380 on a tiny airstrip in the Swiss Alps could’ve been had it involved a single real mountain. Imagine if Reno had been even 5% more committed to his job.
But there’s a visible discrepancy in effort here. While most of the central cast — especially Vincent D’Onofrio and Billy Magnussen — are gamely embracing the absurdity of it all, the very idea of this enterprise is questionable. Not only is Lift a movie about greed, it was likely made because of it.
Lift
Director – F Gary Gray
Cast – Kevin Hart, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Vincent D’Onofrio, Úrsula Corberó, Billy Magnussen, Jacob Batalon, Jean Reno, Sam Worthington, Viveik Kalra
Rating – 2/5
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