Lift is a Fast & Furious for the skies, directed by that franchise’s alumnus F Gary Gray. Lift, which has every intention of sparking off a series of its own, stars Kevin Hart as the head honcho of a gang of high-minded thieves who “rescue art” by stealing it from philistine buyers and driving up its price so that the artists may benefit.
Erm, what? Never mind. The Netflix release is the kind of shallow fun that the streaming platform is awash with. The hip hop music-energised plot sees Cyrus (Hart) and his posse execute the world’s first ever single-edition NFT theft. This art world gimmick is already in danger of dying out, so it’s perhaps best that Cyrus gets recruited by Interpol agent Abby (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) to steal a gold consignment from the malevolent Jorgenson (Jean Reno).
The high-stakes burglary itself, which takes places mid-air, is carried off with a panache that lies somewhere between Mission: Impossible and Fast & Furious. Cyrus just so happens to have the crew with the expertise to hijack a plane. Vincent D’Onofrio, Kim Yoon-Ji, Billy Magnussen, Viveik Kalra and Ursula Corbero provide the back-up to Cyrus’s Kevin Hart’s mission to swap his brilliance for wacky comedy for the suaveness needed to play a criminal mastermind with a heart for art.
Cyrus thinks of himself as a rule-breaker, but the movie follows the rules of the heist template to a T.
At least the 104-minute movie can never be accused of outstaying its welcome. Flashy, fun in parts and easily forgettable too, Lift disappears from the memory as fleetly as it arrives.
