A Review of Lift by Nick Olszyk
Distribution: Netflix
MPAA Rating, PG-13
USCCB Rating: Not Rated at the Time of this Review
Reel Rating, Two Reels
When I was in film
school, I took a directing course with Sheldon Epps, a veteran of situational
comedy including Girlfriends, Hannah Montana, and George Lopez.
He helmed the first few episodes of the Friends spinoff Joey and summed
up its colossal failure this way: “what works well as a spice rarely succeeds
as a main dish.” Matt LeBlanc’s goofy personality was a joy as part of the
famous New York ensemble, but it wasn’t nearly strong enough to carry a whole
show. So too, Kevin Hart is one of the hottest stand-up comics today with a
string of feature hits where he plays the Abott-style sidekick. In Lift,
he puts himself (as producer) center stage in heist drama and thus plummets the
movie to the ground.
Lift begins
with Cyrus (Kevin Hart) and his multi-talented team of thieves pulling off the
first heist ever of an NFT. How does one
steal a digital picture? By kidnapping the artist…sort of. It’s more
“borrowing” because, due to media surrounding the artist’s disappearance, the
price goes from $20 million to $89 million, a cut of which Cyrus gladly shares
with the admittedly shaken celebrity. He’s a thief with a heart of gold, though
he would probably steal that too. This crime impresses the administration at
Interpol who offer Cyrus a deal to wipe his slate clean: steal $500 million in
gold bars from a plane midflight. This would stop a terrorist transaction that
could save thousands of lives. As Gimli would say, “Certainty of death, small
chance of success, what are we waiting for?”
A significant part of
any heist film involves the justification of the crime, and Lift uses
the tried-and-true Robin Hood motif. Cyrus claims he only steals art from those
“undeserving,” although he immediately sells these paintings on the black
market where presumably the buyers are even less deserving. In the original
Hood mythos, Sir Robin of Loxley stole from greedy Norman invaders who
exploited the common Saxon people. He promptly returned this wealth to the poor
who justly owned it in the first place. Lift tries to up the moral ante
by suggesting that this gold will be used by hackers to create artificial
disasters to line their own pockets. If this is the case, a much better use of
Interpol’s time would be better cyber security or levees that are operated by
real humans. In any case, Cyrus’s “charity” makes him and his team fabulously
wealthy, well beyond any need to continue – even prior to this job. In the end,
the gold is just transferred from one criminal to another. If you want a better
film that explores the complexities of the 7th commandment, I
recommend Michael Curtiz’s The Adventures of Robin Hood. Though almost
ninety years old, it is better than Lift in almost every conceivable
way.
While the dilemma of
justified kleptomania is interesting, a film like this rises or falls based on
the quality of its action. The camera work, visual effects, and editing are all
crisp and seamless. There are nice setups, payoffs, and interesting narrative
surprises. Nothing is objectively wrong, so why does this competent action
movie feel so…dull? The answer is found in the director F. Gary Grey’s resume:
everything has been done before and better, even by himself. Lift checks
of every trope in the book. It has a rag tag team, each with their own unique
role and personality, just like The Italian Job. It has a
will-they-won’t-they-of-course-they-will love tension between a criminal and
law enforcement agent, like The Bad Guys. Even its big twist is nearly
identical to Fast Five, and Grey directed the eighth entry in that
series. To succeed in such a genre, one either must parody the conventions or
reinvent them. Lift does neither.
To be perfectly
honest, I thought about giving this film halfway, but then my one-year-old got
up at 1am, so I finished it. This experience nicely summarizes Lift and
its hundreds of imitators. It’s nothing to get excited about, but if you must
deal with a teething baby in the middle of night, there are worse ways to pass
the time.
This article first appeared in Catholic World Report on Janurary 20th, 2024.
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