A One Mann’s Movies Film Review of “Lift” (2024).
“Lift” is on Netflix. And it’s a case of Netflix throwing a case load of money at a weak, generic action script to create some content to fill their front page. Sigh.
Bob the Movie Man Rating:
Plot Summary:
Art thief Cyrus (Kevin Hart) and his gang are recruited by Interpol agent and ex-girlfriend Abby (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) to pull off an audacious heist to foil the plans of international terrorists.
Certification:
UK: 12; US: PG-13. (From the BBFC web site: “Injury detail, sex references, language, threat, violence”).
Talent:
Starring: Kevin Hart, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Sam Worthington, Vincent D’Onofrio, Úrsula Corberó, Billy Magnussen, Yun Jee Kim, Viveik Kalra, Jean Reno, Jacob Batalon.
Directed by: F. Gary Gray.
Written by: Daniel Kunka.
Twitter Handle: #LiftMovie.
Running Time: 1h 47m.
Mbatha-Raw and D’Onofrio… what are you doing in such a nasty place? (Source: Netflix)
“Lift” Film Review:
Positives:
- As is normal in these ‘throw money at the wall’ Netflix movies, there are some exotic locations and some glossy production values.
- There’s some nice speedy zoom/drone shots, typical for this type of movie.
Negatives:
- This is a script that feels like it could easily have been written by AI as a joke. Except you’d like to think an AI would have some sort of logic to avoid some of the “WTF” moments that this film generates. For example:
- the beginning of the film involves the theft of an NFT (Non-Fungible Token) from a gallery in Paris which, as a ‘distraction’, also involves the theft of Van Gogh’s “The Sunflowers” from a gallery in London. Except this theft doesn’t seem to have ANY relevance to the events in Paris at all! Sorry, what??
- (Slight spoiler)… the airbourne heist plan seems to go horribly awry when team-member Luke (Viveik Kalra) bails on getting on the plane. It turns out that this was a part of the plan all along (Ta-dah!) But the heist is made all the more difficult because Luke was supposed to be carrying a key part of the device assembled on the plane. None of this makes ANY sense if this was a plan!!!
- By pure chance, a crashing plane falls out of the sky and crash lands directly onto the villain’s estate!
- The plot relies on you believing that Kevin Hart can be an action hero. At 5’2″ this is (excuse the pun) a bit of a stretch. I don’t wish to be ‘shortist’, but even Tom Cruise is 5’7″! Scenes involving a fist fight on a plane with Cyrus (Hart) and Abby (Mbatha-Raw, only 2″ taller than Hart) fighting professional Bond-style baddies really defy belief. At one point, I swear Abby was picked up by the feet and her head swung against a metal dance pole like a pinana… but she gets up with neither a broken neck or concussion and carries on the fight.
- It is such a waste of talent: Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Vincent D’Onofrio, Jean Reno… they are all better than this nonsense. And could Billy Magnussen’s character BE more annoying? I don’t think so.
Summary Thoughts on “Lift”
I watched this lightweight piece of fluff while doing the ironing. But, imho, it is hardly worthy of being an ‘ironing film’, let alone a sit down and watch film. As my colleague Dan Cook on the Flickering Dreams podcast ranted about on last week’s show, this is nothing more than a “content movie”: lacking any sort of artistic value whatsoever. It’s a depressing state of affairs.
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Trailer for “Lift”:
The trailer is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2L-Sa_6MU0.
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