An empty Hart of gold

MPAA Rating: PG-13
USCCB Rating: Not Rated at the Time of this Review
Reel Rating: 2 out of 5 reels

When I was in film school, I took a directing course with Sheldon Epps, a veteran of situational comedies, including Girlfriends, Hannah Montana, and George Lopez. He helmed the first few episodes of the Friends spinoff Joey, and summed up its colossal failure this way: “What works well as a spice rarely succeeds as a main dish.” Matt LeBlanc’s goofy personality was a joy as part of the famous New York City ensemble, but it wasn’t nearly strong enough to carry a whole show.

In a similar way, Kevin Hart is one of the hottest stand-up comics today, with a string of feature hits in which he plays the Abbott-style sidekick. In Lift, he puts himself (as producer) center stage in a heist drama—and flies the movie into the ground.

Lift begins with Cyrus (Hart) and his multi-talented team of thieves pulling off the first heist ever of an NFT. How does one steal a digital picture? By kidnapping the artist. Sort of. It’s more “borrowing” because, due to media attention surrounding the artist’s disappearance, the price goes from $20 million to $89 million, a cut of which Cyrus gladly shares with the admittedly shaken celebrity. Cyrus is a thief with a heart of gold (though he would probably steal that as well). This crime impresses the administration at Interpol, who offer Cyrus a deal to wipe his slate clean: steal $500 million in gold bars from a plane mid-flight. This brazen act would stop a terrorist transaction that could save thousands of lives. As Gimli would say, “Certainty of death; small chance of success; what are we waiting for?”

A significant part of any heist film involves the justification of the crime, and Lift uses the tried-and-true Robin Hood motif. Cyrus claims he only steals art from those “undeserving,” although he immediately sells these paintings on the black market where, presumably, the buyers are even less deserving. In the original Hood mythos, Sir Robin of Loxley stole from greedy Norman invaders who exploited the common Saxon people. He promptly returned this wealth to the poor who justly owned it in the first place. Lift tries to up the moral ante by suggesting that this gold will be used by hackers to create artificial disasters to line their own pockets. If this is the case, a much better use of Interpol’s time would be better cyber security or levees that are operated by real humans.

In any case, Cyrus’s “charity” makes him and his team fabulously wealthy, well beyond any need to continue, even prior to the Interpol job. Besides, in the end, the gold is just transferred from one criminal to another. If you want a better film that explores the complexities of the Seventh Commandment, I recommend Michael Curtiz’s The Adventures of Robin Hood. Though almost ninety years old, it is better than Lift in almost every possible way.

While the dilemma of justified kleptomania is interesting, a film like this rises or falls based on the quality of its action. The camera work, visual effects, and editing are all crisp and seamless. There are nice setups, payoffs, and interesting narrative surprises. Nothing is objectively wrong—so why does this competent action movie feel so dull?

The answer is found in the director F. Gary Grey’s resume: everything has been done before and better—even by himself. Lift checks of every trope in the book. It has a rag-tag team, each with their own unique role and personality, just like The Italian Job. It has a will-they-won’t-they-of-course-they-will love tension between a criminal and law enforcement agent, like The Bad Guys. Even its big twist is nearly identical to Fast Five, and Grey directed the eighth entry in that series.

But to succeed in such a genre, one either must parody the conventions or reinvent them. Lift does neither.

To be perfectly honest, I thought about giving up on this film halfway. But then my one-year-old got up at 1:00 am, so I finished it. And that experience nicely summarizes Lift and its hundreds of imitators. It’s nothing to get excited about, but if you must deal with a teething baby in the middle of night, there are worse ways to pass the time.