Lift

Cyrus (Kevin Hart) leads a team of high tech thieves. His one-time fling Abby (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is the pursuing Interpol art agent. Her superior Huxley (Sam Worthington) offers him immunity if he steals $500 million in gold. Evil criminal Jorgenson (Jean Reno) has to transfer that much to hacker group Leviathan to take over the water infrastructure of the world.

Kevin Hart is being cool Kevin Hart instead of the usual manic clown Kevin Hart. I like this for him. Generally, I like most of the cast. On the other hand, the story is one of those written by A. I. It has ridiculous turns, ridiculous technobabble, and a ridiculous caper. As long as one is willing to live with the ridiculous, this is a light forgettable escapist time.

All that money, all that talent, all that distribution. The only thing Netflix's movie making adventure lack is heart.

Like most of their other offerings, this apparent movie lacks soul, spirit, whatever you want to call it. Its not there.

They spent a fortune on the talent and the production values, but apparently they don't care much about the actual script.

F. Gary Gray has clearly decided that he'd rather have a paycheque than make a good movie. This stinker continues along the same lines as everything else that he's made since the Italian Job.

Seriously, this movie is so bad I wanted to call up Netflix customer service and ask for my subscription fee back. Oh wait, they don't have any customer service.

Bad movie. Not even suitable for when you're stoned.

If you are frequently critical of things not making sense in movies, Lift is not for you. Me personally, if I'm not enjoying a movie, I become critical of all its flaws. But if the movie is entertaining me, I can overlook a lot.

And that's exactly what happened with Lift. I won't argue about how "good" it is. But I was thoroughly entertained. It's a fun movie with charming actors playing likeable characters. The action scenes are all enjoyable. And it has a solid musical score.

Lift was a pleasant surprise. I mostly hate straight-to-streaming movies. I just came off of an abysmal one with Amazon's Role Play. Luckily this was endlessly more enjoyable.

(1 viewing, 1/12/2024)

I recognize a cheap copycat of a heist movie when I see one and this is definitely one of them. I really do like Kevin Hart (THE reason I started watching this) in other movies, but this time around even he didnt make me laugh.

The bad: Kevin Hart tries to act seriously this time around and that basically is NOT his strength at all. Bummer. But what's worse though is that ALL the other actors are TOTAL NOBODIES.

More bad: supposedly a heist movie, but the heists are completely 100% STUPID AND SILLY LOOKING. This was suppose to excite me?

This looks and feels like yet another cheaply made Netflic movie, only made to fill up another time slot. To be avoided (if one can), especially by the Kevin Hart fans, of whom I am one.

As usual, an expensive cast can't help with a poor script of less than B-grade quality. Kevin Hart is mis-cast and has zero charisma as the supposed leader of an elite team of art thieves. A few other names show up but have little to do.

Action is kind of feeble, except for the initial Venice boat chase which is just OK. The actual plot, such as it is, makes very little sense, and seems essentially random.

Even my wife, who is very tolerant for basic fun movies, was openly mocking the ridiculous and predictable script by the end.

Yes, it's another half-hearted by the numbers effort by Netflix. No, it's really not worth your time. I regretted watching it.