LONDON: You have to give the suits at Netflix some credit. The streaming giant’s commitment to creating glossy, big-budget vehicles for some of the biggest names in the movie business is absolutely unwavering, despite the fact that many of their recent efforts (“Sweet Girl,” “The Gray Man,” “Heart of Stone”) have been of questionable quality and have enjoyed decidedly lukewarm receptions.
The start of 2024 sees the turn of Kevin Hart to go through the Netflix IP machine. “Lift” casts the comedian and actor as Cyrus, the suave leader of a group of high-tech thieves tasked with liberating $500 million in gold bars from a passenger plane flying between London and Geneva. Cyrus not only has a plucky team of misfits and oddballs to help him, but he is also aided by Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s plucky Interpol agent, who has a vested interest in the team stealing the gold from international gangster Lars Jorgensen (Jean Reno). There’s some added backstory about the gold being used to fund environmental terrorism or something, but it’s given such little attention by the script that it’s not really worth worrying about.
Everything about “Lift” feels like it’s trying too hard — from the slightly shonky CGI to the shoehorned jokes about NFTs (“Lift” was due to release in the second half of 2023, so perhaps these would have landed better six months ago) and the paper-thin characters. Sam Worthington’s creepy Interpol boss is bizarrely offensive, while Reno grimaces for about 10 minutes. Most egregious of all, the usually brilliant Vincent D'Onofrio is reduced to a preening stereotype during his few moments of screentime.
Hart, at least, is earnest enough. “Lift” sees him playing against type as the polished career criminal rather than the comic relief and he leans into the part, trying his best to keep a straight face. Director F. Gary Gray has proven action chops too, but there’s too little here for his cast and crew to work with. Where it could perhaps have worked as an action spoof, “Lift” takes itself too seriously but then struggles to deliver on its own heist movie aspirations.
