Lift – A Disappointing Heist Film With A Wasted Cast (Early Review)

Lift is the newest heist thriller from F. Gary Gray starring a large ensemble of actors including Kevin Hart, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Vincent D’Onofrio, Billy Magnussen, Jacob Batalon, Jean Reno, and Sam Worthington amongst others. The story revolves around a band of expert criminals led by Cyrus Whitaker (Hart), who is recruited by the government to lift $500 million in gold from a passenger plane from a dangerous criminal named Jorgensen (Reno), but the catch is they must do it mid-flight when the plane is already 40,000 feet in the air. Ultimately, the film had all the makings to be a fun new heist film with a great cast, a talented director, and an interesting premise, however, it doesn’t amount to much and feels like yet another overly produced, generic, and instantly forgettable Netflix original.

There are not nearly enough heist films anymore and Gray has proven multiple times that he can make a damn good one, but as talented of a director he is, his touch and style are nowhere to be found in a film that feels like it could’ve been directed by just about anyone. Getting off to a bad start, it thankfully picks up from there once the actual planning and preparation for the aforementioned main heist begins. But then once that actual heist is finally set into motion, it quickly loses steam and never recovers getting progressively worse with each passing scene. For some reason, instead of keeping things small scaled and grounded, the film decides to overcomplicate its simple premise and the bigger it gets, the less enjoyable and entertaining it becomes. It feels like the filmmakers simply tried to stretch believability as much as they possibly could.

It’s kind of amazing the effort behind how this strong of an ensemble was put together for this film, which only makes it all the more disappointing how they, for the most part, are given very little to do. Hart has done action roles before and while he’s not bad as Whitaker, he doesn’t fit this role. He does his best, and he should absolutely try more of these roles in the future, but the writing handcuffs him from the start and is never given a chance to make Whitaker his own. Mbatha-Raw is the main bright spot of both the cast and film itself. She easily gives the best performance as Abby, the one character worth caring about, simply because she’s one of the few characters audiences get to know. Meanwhile, Worthington and Billy Magnussen are the standouts among the supporting cast, despite being there for only have a handful of scenes where they are seemingly just there for the paycheck. And the less said about the complete waste of Vincent D’Onofrio the better.

As many things as this has going for it, Lift doesn’t really succeed at any of them. There’s barely any real action to be had and when there is, it’s shaky and over edited beyond belief. It has a lot of comedy, but hardly any of it works or elicits much laughter. There’s no tension either as audiences never truly feel the stakes of the job while its ensemble is utilized horribly, with hardly any of them even getting to interact with one another. It also suffers from some extremely distracting visual effects and constant distracting green screen. At least it’s pretty short, Gugu Mbatha-Raw is great, and the heist set up is reasonably entertaining, but those are the only real discernable positives here. Those just looking for a quick and undemanding 90-minute diversion might find this watchable enough.

At the end of the day, there are so many other better heist films available across multiple different platforms, therefore there is very little reason at all as to why one should choose this film over any of those countless options out there.

still courtesy of Netflix

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Connor Carey

www.connorsmoviereviews.com/