It’s a new month, so it’s time for a new Kevin Hart movie on Netflix. This time around, Hart forgoes comedy for something in the action-heist genre with Lift, in which he plays Cyrus Whitaker, the head of an international heist crew that gets busted by Interpol attempting to steal an artist (long story, don’t ask, but he’s played by the Spider-Man franchise’s Jacob Batalon). Abby (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), the Interpol agent who tracks them down, has ulterior motives for wanting them in her clutches, and it has nothing to do with the fact that she and Cyrus dated briefly years earlier, before she found out he was a master thief.
Since this crew has a reputation for carrying out heists that others would deem impossible, she sees them as ideal candidates to pull off the ultimate theft: $500 million in gold while in midair on a 777 passenger plane flying at 40,000 feet. And it has to be done so that no one on the plane realizes anything is happening. The gold is going to the highly protected compound of an international terrorist named Jorgensen (Jean Reno), who is planning to use it to fund future operations, so Interpol wants it intercepted before it gets to him. Cyrus agrees to the gig because it means Interpol will clear the criminal records of his entire crew, but he insists that Abby accompany them to make sure there’s no funny business along the way (which there definitely is).
Written by Daniel Kunka and directed by action filmmaker F. Gary Gray, Lift has its moments of decent action sequences despite the ridiculous nature of the heist itself. I liked the mix of actors in Cyrus’s crew, including Vincent D’Onofrio as master-of-disguise Denton; Úrsula Corberó as pilot Camila; Billy Magnussen as safecracker Magnus; Yun Jee Kim as hacker Mi-Sun; and Viveik Kalra as Luke (I don’t remember what his specialty is, assuming he has one). Other supporting players include Avatar’s Sam Worthington as Abby’s boss Huxley. He wants the mission carried out at any cost, even if the lives of the team are in jeopardy. And there's the great Burn Gorman as Jorgensen’s right-hand henchman, just generally looking and acting menacing throughout the film.
There’s nothing special about Lift as a heist or action movie, but it has a few nice moments on an interpersonal level. Scenes between Cyrus and Abby show a bit of chemistry, but I also got a chuckle out of seeing D’Onofrio as the team guru, doling out advice and just generally being supportive to everyone; it’s quite a contrast to his other role this week as the Kingpin on the Disney+ series Echo. What I found most interesting about this film, however, was watching Hart attempt to stay on script and not improvise jokes or make funny faces for a laugh. He’s dialing it back, playing it cool, and it doesn’t look like he’s struggling while he’s doing it. And working with a dramatic pro like Raw probably provided a guiding light to help Hart play it straight. More a curiosity than a great movie, Lift is a painless distraction that allows its characters to trot around the globe and have a little fun stealing from the rich.
The film is now streaming on Netflix.
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