Lift

A far-fetched heist caper is redeemed by a likeable cast and a flourish of ingenious twists.

Team spirit: Kevin Hart, Yunjee Kim, N8 and Úrsula Corberó

Andy Warhol said that art “is what you can get away with.” In today’s world of Banksy and Damien Hirst, art is what you can afford. At a Sterling’s auction in Venice, the super-rich are bidding for a work of conceptual art with its masked, anonymous creator – N8 – by its side. N8’s latest creation is a high-tech, Hirst-like visor titled ‘Self Importrait’ which is comprised of 482 miniature cameras that together create a non-fungible token, thereby verifying its authenticity. Here, high art meets high-tech and international art thief Cyrus (Kevin Hart) starts the bidding at $12m. Of course, he’s not interested in the art, but after kidnapping N8 in a meticulously planned abduction, he escalates the value of the piece to $89m.

However, there are bigger stakes around the corner, as once he’s been caught, he’s offered his freedom in return for lifting $500m in gold bullion from a plane headed to Zurich from Heathrow. If anybody can pull of such a ‘lift’, it is Cyrus and his team of risk-addicted experts. They’re a motley crew and relish a challenge, even something as hair-brained as this. Besides, if they refuse the offer by Interpol agent Abby (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), they will spend most of their remaining years behind bars…

Here, the art is the media – that is, the materials employed to animate the bigger picture: a collective of accomplished actors, plenty of up-to-the-minute tech and an array of mouth-watering locations. The star is Daniel Kunka, the scenarist whose phenomenally well-researched script ended up on the annual so-called ‘Black List’ of most enjoyed screenplays that were never picked up for production (in that year). This was the third time that Kunka had made it on the ‘Black List’ and he’s gaining enormous traction in Hollywood. Kunka certainly knows his art, and his tech, but is savvy enough to come up with the line: “If you can’t hack the tech, you hack the people.” This is a heist caper – and who doesn’t love a heist caper? Few things prove more rewarding than seeing obscenely rich people lose their lunch through the trickery of knaves smarter than they are.

There are clichés aplenty – as usual, the hacker in the team is a catwalk beauty (Yunjee Kim) and government forces seem able to rustle up unlimited resources on tap – but the energy is high and the twists ingenious. It seemed like a good idea to cast a serious actress like Gugu Mbatha-Raw opposite Kevin Hart, although it’s the latter who gives the more restrained performance. The crew themselves could not be more diverse, with the wheelchair-bound actor David Proud playing a wheelchair-bound employee of air traffic control – and snaring the lion’s share of the laughs. If Lift follows the template of the Fast & Furious franchise, it may come as no surprise that its director F. Gary Gray helmed The Fate of the Furious. His Lift is lighter on its feet, but is none the less entertaining for that. It is the very definition of popcorn escapism: an airy snack worth its weight in gold.

JAMES CAMERON-WILSON

Cast: Kevin Hart, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Vincent D'Onofrio, Úrsula Corberó, Billy Magnussen, Jacob Batalon, Jean Reno, Sam Worthington, Viveik Kalra, Yunjee Kim, Burn Gorman, Paul Anderson, David Proud, Oli Green, Ross Anderson, Stefano Skalkotos, Martina Avogadri. 

Dir F. Gary Gray, Pro Simon Kinberg, Audrey Chon, Matt Reeves, Adam Kassan, Kevin Hart and Brian Smiley, Screenplay Daniel Kunka, Ph Bernhard Jasper, Pro Des Dominic Watkins, Ed William Yeh, Music Dominic Lewis and Guillaume Roussel, Costumes Antoinette Messam, Sound Alan Rankin and Stephen P. Robinson. 

6th & Idaho Motion Picture Company/Kinberg Genre Films/Hartbeat-Netflix.
106 mins. USA. 2024. UK and US Rel: 12 January 2024. Cert. 12.

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