Heist movies are my jam. Ocean’s Eleven is my all-time favorite movie. I love The Italian Job, Inside Man, The Town, Ambulance, the list goes on. The genre allows for all sorts of fun. A heist movie can be a comedy, a gritty crime thriller, and everything in between. The one thing a (well made) heist movie isn’t? Dull. And that, sadly, brings us to Lift.
Kevin Hart stars as Cyrus Whitaker, art thief. But he’s not just any art thief. He’s a morally just art thief, not claiming he and his crew don’t steal, they “rescue works of art from undeserving owners.” Lift goes to painstaking efforts to make the heist crew the good guys. But part of the genius of a good heist movie is that the protagonists don’t have to be your typical good guys. Often they simply need to be better than whoever they’re stealing from. And “better” can be a lot of things. Like Ocean’s Eleven, they’re just more likable than Terry Benedict. He’s a dick and colors outside the lines of the law, but it’s not like he’s funding terrorism, like our villain in Lift.
Cyrus is approached by Interpol agent Abby Gladwell with a deal. Cyrus and his team have been fingered for stealing a Van Gogh, and they’re all facing serious prison time. But if they help with this mission, all felonies, past and present, will be wiped clean. Billionaire Lars Jorgensen is known to fund terror groups, then shorting stocks in the affected regions. Interpol intel confirms Jorgensen is about to make a deal with major hacking group Leviathan.
They don’t know what Leviathan is planning, but Jorgensen is paying them $500 million in gold, so it must be big. The gold is being flown to Zurich, where the payment will be made. Cyrus, his team, and Agent Gladwell are tasked with stealing that gold to block the deal and stop whatever atrocity Leviathan has planned. Further complicating matters is Abby and Cyrus have a past history. They weren’t quite in a relationship, but they did meet and spend a whirlwind five days together in Paris, with some clearly unresolved feelings on both sides.
Terrorists vs non-terrorists. Makes a pretty easy case for who we should be rooting for, right? It doesn’t matter in the least if Cyrus is a “moral” thief or not. He’s not a terrorist and he doesn’t fund terrorism. He’s the good guy. There is so much unnecessary time spent on building him up to be a good person. Make him charming, give him some standard-issue complicated personal past. That’s all you need. The extra effort to paint him and his team in this positive light comes off as clunky and it’s just not needed whatsoever.
But even more than that, Lift is just poorly structured. The opening is some of the worst stuff I’ve seen on film in a long time. It’s choppy, not funny, not clever, with heavy, boring exposition. But it does get better from there, even if only for a short while. Once the – extensive – setup is done, we get to the planning of the actual heist, a genre staple. And this stretch is actually pretty fun. If the rest of the movie had this smoothness and level of energy, it would have at least been a passable affair.
And then when the heist itself starts, Lift takes another nosedive. Most good action-heist movies have a certain air of impossibility to them (yes, I’m taking this opportunity to once again reference the Cars don’t fly scene from Furious 7, legitimately one of my favorite movie scenes ever). That should add excitement and a different level of fun from the rest of the movie. But neither of those are here. When your movie is culminating in a single, central set piece, you have to pull it off. Lift doesn’t do that. It somehow manages to feel all too familiar, too basic and by the numbers. In a disappointing way, it’s honestly kind of impressive.
But the worst thing of all can’t even be fully discussed, as it would spoil a major part of the movie. So I’ll just say that Lift commits what is – to me – a cardinal sin of movies. It makes a decision at some point – won’t even say when in the movie it occurs to be as vague as possible – that automatically turns me against a movie.
That’s a lot of negativity, but it’s not all a failure. Billy Magnussen is terrific as safecracker Magnus. He brought an energy that the rest of the movie should have had. Give me that movie. There are hints of great characters with crew members Camila (Úrsula Corberó) and Mi-Sun (Kim Yoon-ji). They’re given so little to do though, that their ultimate impact is pretty minimal. Both actresses do the best they can with they had. Vincent D’Onofrio’s use is probably the most baffling though. He’s a delight as Denton, the team’s master of disguise. But that’s really mostly due to D’Onofrio being, you know, D’Onofrio. Again, give so little material to work with.
Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Abby is the biggest highlight for Lift. Along with Hart, her character gets by far the most depth and development. Abby has conflicting and shifting feelings about everything going on. Mbatha-Raw gets the chance the really act, 100x more so than anyone else. And she’s great. She’s far too good for the rest of the product around her.
On the flip side, Hart is surprisingly the weakest link. He’s hilariously out-acted by Mbatha-Raw at every turn. Hart is a decent enough actor, and his talents could have been perfectly suited to this role, if the character had been written to those talents. But the role called for him to be something he’s not quite able to pull off – at least not yet. Lift asks him to be a smooth, debonair, wise, all-around good guy. But the script strips the character of all of Hart’s natural charm and charisma, two qualities that you would think would be perfect for this type of character.
There’s not a ton to like with Lift. A few good performances and a fun, somewhat solid 30-40 minute stretch put it at least on the lower end of the “watchable” spectrum. But everything else is either too messy, too clunky, too dull, or some combination of all three. Unless you want to have it on in the background while you’re cooking or doing laundry, Lift is a movie you can safely skip.
Grade: D+
