Kevin Hart’s plane heist movie is in a no-fly zone.
20 years after doing his own “Airplane!” rip-off with “Soul Plane,” Kevin Hart is back with another plane movie, but in the “Ocean’s Eleven” genre called “Lift.” As far as I’m concerned it has more action and stealing than laughs, which is too bad considering that Steven Soderbergh knew how to make his heist movies ingenious and smart. This one has to feature predictable twists, lame special effects, and not many people you’re interested in.
Hart plays Cyrus, the leader of a team of professional art thieves. He doesn’t get thrown around with CGI effects and slapstick idiocy as we’ve seen in “Ride Along,” “The Man from Toronto,” “Night School,” or “Me Time.” He tries to keep his cool in a Danny Ocean manner. And he also has a Tess connection with his ex-girlfriend Abby Gladwell (Gugu MBatha-Raw), who isn’t dating his enemy, but is now an enemy to him. An Interpol agent, if you will.
You know. I was just suggesting in my review of “Role Play” that Kaley Cuoco’s assassin and Mark Wahlberg’s assassin in “The Family Plan” would have been better together in another movie, even though I acknowledged it would have been a “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” rip-off. And right now, I’m seeing Hart and MBatha-Raw reuniting after a break-up, and they both make the wise choice of not resorting to bloodshed, but using Danny and Tess bantering that could bring them both back together. It ends up, however, being treated like 5 minute breaks from the heist plans, cliches, and underdeveloped team players.
Speaking of which…
Cyrus’s team consists of Camilla (Ursula Corbero) is the pilot, Mi-Sun (Yun Jee Kim) is the hacker, Magnus (Billy Magnussen) is the safecracker, Luke (Viveik Kalra) is the engineer, and Denton (Vincent D’Onofrio) is the master of disguise (kind of). The Interpol agent I just mentioned tries to bring him and his team to justice, but with only Denton being captured. She still can’t get her handcuffs on Cyrus.
However, she gets informed by her boss (Sam Worthington) about Lars Jorgensen (Jean Reno), a dirty banker, who bankrolls terrorist attacks. The more destruction and injuries/death, the more money he makes off of them. He’s planning a massive water attack with the hacker group Leviathan, who want their payment in the form of gold. If he gets a hand on the latest shipment of gold, en route from London to Zurich, then he could flood major cities.
Therefore, she is forced to have Cyrus and his team lift the gold from a passenger plane up in the air in exchange for their criminal records cleared. His condition is that she joins their team to make sure they won’t get thrown under the bus. They all know the dangers of this heist, but they’re willing to face them, like they’re cousins of the “Fast & Furious” family. In fact, this movie was directed by F. Gary Gray, who specializes in this crime genre. Well, at least he’s done better at the genre before.
Hart can broaden his horizons as he’s done with voice acting (from “The Secret Life of Pets” to “DC League of Super Pets”) and more serious roles (with his best being “Fatherhood”), but he’s unconvincing as the master thief. He dresses the part and seems to be having fun, but he feels flat in his attempts to channel on the charisma of George Clooney or Frank Sinatra (who played Danny Ocean in the Rat Pack movie). Only his chemistry with MBatha-Raw is the more interesting thing about the film, and especially when she doesn’t have to deal with his typical slapstick. Smart move on not co-starring with him in “The Man from Toronto.”
Everything else-from the boss turning his back on the agent to the plot twist non-movie goers don’t see coming-takes the easy way out, and I think this is an expensive movie. If this was released in theaters, then “Lift” would have stolen your money. But since this is on Netflix, it just steals your time.
Streaming on Netflix