Christopher Barr/Netflix
After parodying his attempts to become an action movie star in the Quibi/Roku short film series “Die Hart” (later adapted into an Amazon Prime film), Kevin Hart goes for the genre's gold and attempts to star in “Lift.” to do the right thing. an absurdly ridiculous, over-the-top, yet entertaining heist film that tests its credibility at every turn – but who cares, because it's got Hart under control.
The latest bloated Netflix star-studded action epic on the scale of “Red Notice” and “The Gray Man” has our star as master art thief Cyrus Whitaker, who we meet with his team attempting one of their signature thefts in Venice An Italian auction house got involved in an NFT (just to keep it as contemporary as possible), which led to a wild boat chase through the colorful canals, but didn't end well for the gang.
But just when you think they're down, a bigger job awaits them in the form of being recruited by Interpol agent Abby Gladwell (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), who has previously had difficult experiences with Cyrus in Paris and is not there Would like more. But her boss, Dennis Huxley (Sam Worthington), insists that a get-out card is worth the price to get her to get back $500 million worth of gold bullion, which evil investment banker Lars Jorgensen (Jean Reno) claims to be worth used bribes for terrorists) who has big and dangerous plans. She reluctantly agrees, as does Cyrus, and the game of cat and mouse begins.
The gist of the task is that Cyrus and his team must carry out this heist 40,000 feet in the air in a plane in which the gold is safely transported in an impenetrable vault. The key to the plan is that Camilla (Úrsula Corberó), Cyrus' helmswoman, pilots another private plane underneath this one and connects to it electronically to enable the transfer after many other machinations on board. This is just the beginning of the ambitious task, which becomes more and more ridiculous as it goes on and is genuinely fun, even if the ending and the actual ending are all too predictable.
Lift is so firmly entrenched in the well-known heist genre that one of its producers, Simon Kinberg, made it with his company called Kinberg Genre Films. So it will come as no surprise that Lift borrows liberally from almost every other film of its kind, old and new. Setting it on a global scale is a Netflix trope, but who's going to complain about places like Venice, London, Belfast, Cortina and the Alps? The Cyrus team is also appealing, led by Hart, who is comfortable navigating new terrain, and joining Corberó are veteran Vincent D'Onofrio as a disguise man, Billy Magnussen as a safecracker, Viveik Katra as an engineer and Yun Jee Kim as an electronics expert . Maybe they're not as star-studded as your average “Oceans” movie, but they add international appeal, and that's what Netflix is all about when it comes to financing expensive films like this. Reno is always reliable, even when he plays the villain here. Worthington is also pretty one-dimensional in the straight-laced boss role we've seen a million times before.
F. Gary Gray, whose film credits include big-budget films like “Fate of the Furious,” the remake of “The Italian Job” and the more low-budget bank robber indie “Set It Off,” is clearly happy with everything a film this Scale requires. The endless credits that Netflix turns off if you don't act quickly is proof that it takes a village to make something like this a success.
Producers include Kinberg and partner Audrey Chon Hart, Bryan Smiley, Matt Reeves and Adam Kassan.
Title: Elevator
Distributor: Netflix
Release date: January 12, 2024 (Streaming)
Director: F. Gary Gray
Script: Daniel Kunka
Pour: Kevin Hart, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Vincent D'Onofrio, Billy Magnussen, Ursula Corbera, Viveik Katra, Yun Jee Kim, Jacob Batalon, Jean Reno, Sam Worthington
Evaluation: PG-13
Duration: 1 hour 44 minutes