LIFT -- The Latest Netflix Heist Movie Starts Fun but Ends in CGI Mediocrity

Review by Sean Boelman

(L to R) Kevin Hart as Cyrus, Billy Magnussen as Magnus, Vincent D'Onofrio as Denton, Úrsula Corberó as Camila, Yun Jee Kim as Mi-Sun, Viveik Kalra as Luke and Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Abby in Lift. Credit: Courtesy of Netflix © 2023.

Netflix seemingly cranks out a new high-concept action-thriller with an A-list star every few months, and the most recent entry in that canon is the Kevin Hart vehicle Lift. The Italian Job filmmaker F. Gary Gray’s return to the heist genre, Lift isn’t terrible for a January Netflix dump, offering some genuine fun despite an anticlimactic ending.

Lift follows a heist crew who is faced with a seemingly impossible job: stealing $100 million in gold from a passenger plane mid-flight to prevent it from falling into even worse hands. This is the type of high-concept action schlock that Netflix will report as being one of their highest-streamed movies of all time, although with an actual director at the helm of this one, it has something that many of the others are missing.

The first half of the film is fun, if already somewhat dated. It’s important to remember that Lift was slated to come out in mid-2023 before being delayed due to the strikes, but even then, the NFT-focused heist of the first act would have felt humorously late. However, when we get into the “assemble the team” stage of the main job, it’s really enjoyable.

Unfortunately, where Lift struggles that many other heist movies succeed is that the payoff isn’t there. The third act is underwhelming, the heist itself failing to live up to the promise of excitement from the planning stage. We all know the formula: things don’t go as planned, only for us to discover that the obstacles were part of the plan all along. Unfortunately, the team doesn’t encounter enough difficulty with their plan to make the movie fun.

(L to R) Kevin Hart as Cyrus, Yun Jee Kim as Mi-Sun, Jacob Battalion as N8 and Úrsula Corberó as Camila in Lift. Credit: Courtesy of Netflix © 2023.

Additionally, Daniel Kunka’s script doesn’t give the audience any reason to care about the archetypal characters. Each member of the team has their role to play in the job, and they have the tropey personalities to go along with them. The only emotional ground to the story is the romantic tension between Hart’s team leader and Mbatha-Raw’s Interpol agent, and that too is conventional. 

That being said, the film does benefit from committed performances by its cast. Hart is fun in his role, which is surprising considering how straight-faced he is. Knowing his comedic background, one would expect the character to be wise-cracking, but that’s not really the case. The comedic relief is instead Billy Magnussen, playing a role similar to what he’s done before, and Vincent D’Onofrio, doing something that feels refreshingly zany. Unfortunately, the female co-stars don’t make much of an impact in one way or the other.

From a visual standpoint, Lift is precisely the CGI-heavy monstrosity you’d expect from a streaming exclusive movie with a humorously large budget. The entire third act, which takes place on an airplane, clearly looks like it was shot against a green screen, with the only impressive characteristic being the 

After a first half that’s genuinely pretty fun, Lift fizzles out when it gets to the actual heist, which makes it a fundamental failure in its genre. However, enough about this is fun for it to stand out among the deluge of Netflix’s lackluster action movie content.

Lift streams on Netflix beginning January 12.

​Rating: 3/5