Sometimes, after a demanding work week, you want to watch a low-stakes, enjoyable movie with just enough plot to enjoy. Heist comedy Lift tries to be that film, with Kevin Hart as a smooth criminal who steals art in order to keep art from undeserving owners and improve the artist’s revenue from their work. It’s an interesting twist to the Robin Hood stereotype, one that could have hinted at concerns of screen artists last year when its release date was originally scheduled for. That being said, the film throws this idea away when Kevin Hart and his team are now forced to participate in a risky heist due to the Interpol. The events that play out amount to a fairly generic caper, but there are far better heist films to spend your weekend watching, with far better plots and stunts.
An international heist crew, led by Cyrus Whitaker, race to lift $500 million in gold from a passenger plane at 40,000 feet.
After Interpol pulls enough evidence for one of their heists, art thief Cyrus and the international crew he’s assembled are offered a deal to pull off a heist mid-flight by Cyrus’ Interpol agent ex-girlfriend Abby.
With the fairly generic plotline of Lift, one has to wonder how the producers were able to get such a stacked cast of really talented actors. From across the Atlantic comes Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Burn Gorman, Paul Anderson, and David Proud, but even big names from non-English speaking countries like Úrsula Corberó of Money Heist fame, K-Pop star NS Yoon-G, and former French MMA fighter Jess Liaudin are here to play. We’ve seen them in better titles before, so it’s boggling as to why they chose this one. Perhaps it’s the money, for further name recognition or maybe as a favor, but hopefully this cast got what they came for when they agreed to join this convoluted caper.
Hopefully this leads somehow to bigger and better roles for the cast.
BAFTA
1 nomination
