Review by C.J. Bunce
A great heist movie grabs you from the opening scene and never lets go. In recent years you can look to the 2017 movie Logan Lucky, which has a ticking clock that keeps you on the edge of your seat as Daniel Craig, Adam Driver, Channing Tatum, and Riley Keough try to steal all the ticket revenue from a racing event. That same year saw Ocean’s 8, a franchise sequel that, despite a powerhouse cast, isn’t quite as memorable. The year 2021 saw two big-budget heist movies: Army of Thieves with director Zack Snyder’s heist movie-with-a-heart, and then Red Notice, which despite starring Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds, and Gal Gadot, lacked style, cool sets, or any novel use of heist movie tropes. If you’ve seen all of these, the only one you likely remember is Logan Lucky because you hadn’t seen anything like it before–the hillbillies were a new idea, and so was the venue, and it had some surprises and twists.
The new Kevin Hart heist movie Lift is now streaming on Netflix. So how does it compare?
When you think of greats in the heist genre, you probably think of the twists and turns and action of The Bank Job, the fast-moving thrills of a young couple escaping the life of crime in Baby Driver, Paul Rudd freezing Michael Douglas’s basement safe open in Ant-Man, a group of college kids outsmarting the casinos under the tutelage of Kevin Spacey in 21, an unlucky band of wash-outs paid to test company security systems in the classic film Sneakers, the goofy fun of Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther movies, or the style and calm demeanor of the rat pack in the original Ocean’s 11.
The new entry Lift is in the league of ensemble cast heist movies like The Italian Job, the Ocean remakes, and Snyder’s Army of Thieves. The set-up is like an episode of Leverage, without the fun, action, and chemistry of the cast. That series had a band of criminals renowned for their specific crime specialty: a Mastermind, a Grifter, a Thief, a Hitter, and a Hacker. Lift follows a thief named Cyrus played by Kevin Hart as he leads a team in the supposedly very first heist of a multi-million-dollar piece of NFT art (that’s NFT for non-fungible token, the strange recent incarnation of art that only exists in the digital realm)–art that was created by an artist played by Spider-Man guy-in-the-chair Jacob Batalon. On Cyrus’s team is a pilot, Camila, played by Úrsula Corberó (who played Baroness in Snake Eyes). There’s also Vincent D’Onofrio (Echo, Men in Black) as a master of disguise named Denton, who may or may not have multiple personalities. South Korean singer Kim Yoon-ji is Mi-Sun, a noted hacker, Viveik Kalra (Voyagers) is Luke, an engineer, and Billy Magnussen (No Time to Die) is Magnus, a safecracker.
Unfortunately this band of thieves gets caught by Cyrus’s former brief romantic encounter Abby, an Interpol agent played by The Surface series star Gugu Mbatha-Raw. Abby convinces her boss Huxley, played by Sam Worthington (Avatar, Terminator Salvation) to let the team off with a slap on the wrist if they help her hijack a plane carrying the gold of crime boss Jorgenson, played by The Professional star Jean Reno. As a bonus, Burn Gorman, the actor behind many of our favorite villains, plays one of his thugs. The gold heist plot mimics the plot of James Bond’s Casino Royale–cut off the funding and the terrorist can’t destroy the world. On paper this all should make for a good heist movie.
But it’s all a bit too much of a cookie-cutter story, and despite an expensive experimental jet that flies upside down with cool windows overhead, the movie is a little too slick. Too glossy, with not too much substance to grab onto, even for an action movie. In most of the mainstream ensemble cast heist movies viewers need to look past all the implausible parts. Secretly removing a ton of gold from an airplane midflight is beyond implausible–it’s impossible. Audiences might get past that with suitable distractions: great music, great cinematography, dazzling direction, or all the above might help. F. Gary Grey knows how to direct heist movies (The Italian Job) and action movies (The Fast and the Furious), so that may mean it’s the script that is lacking, which was written by newcomer Daniel Kunka. But the script is really just a big episode of MacGyver, so maybe that’s not why it doesn’t quite work. Maybe it’s the cinematography that just isn’t exciting enough. That work was done by Bernhard Jasper, and this movie does seem to play out like his heist movie Army of Thieves. More likely, it’s lacking something in every category.
Kevin Hart usually wins over audiences with his humor, and here he’s the serious leading man, without his normal infusion of comedy. We don’t get any backstory about the team of thieves. Who are they and how did they get together? We just don’t know. The plot relies on every element of the crime working, and for the most part it does. But you never really get the feeling any risk or stakes are involved. It lacks the typical thrills of the genre, despite some good effects. As an action movie, Lift doesn’t bring enough to approach the bigger Netflix action movies like 6 Underground or Extraction, or anything like the Fast & Furious movies, or other airplane centric movies like where similar crazy feats are attempted, like in Executive Decision.
But Lift also isn’t a bad movie. It’s (below) freezing cold out, and millions across the country are just after something new to keep them occupied. Kevin Hart holds his own, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw makes a good partner for him. So many teams in movies like this start and never circle back around again, like The Man from U.N.C.L.E. movie, or 6 Underground. It may not be Sneakers, The Bank Job, Baby Driver, or Logan Lucky, but it’s a better way to spend your time than alternatives, including like the aforementioned Red Notice. If you’ve run through all the best of the genre, or you’re wanting to watch them all, you can check out Lift, now streaming on Netflix.
If you really like the heist genre, take a look back at our reviews of Donald Westlake’s brilliant Castle in the Air here, and Max Allan Collins’ Spree here–and maybe give one or both a try.
