Lift

Lift is the story of how the best team of thieves to ever have thieved are bullied by Interpol into pulling off an impossible heist. The wrinkle is that the heist is from a plane that is in mid-flight, and that they will be stealing a buttload of gold from the meanest criminal to ever do crime, and they will be doing this because this will save lives somehow, and also because they are the only people capable of doing this job, this team of wisecracking wisenheimers and their nonsense super-tech.

I’m a sucker for heist movies, y’all know this.

I’m even a sucker for the dumb ones, and you know Lift is going to be one of the dumb ones, because the film’s cold open introduction to the various team members who make up the heist crew takes place during a heist of an NFT, which is an item of absolutely no actual value, because they’re just a scam made to trick stupid FOMO nerd wannabes with too much money and extraordinarily bad taste, out of their undeserved wealth.

The team is made up of the boss, the pilot, the hacker, the safecracker, the engineer, and the master of disguise. Together, they’re a team of thieves with hearts of gold who “liberate” great art from “undeserving” owners, which sounds even more stupid when coupled with the fact that, again… at the start of the movie, they’re “stealing” an NFT, something anyone who can right click on a mouse can do. Also again, only incredibly stupid dipshits would pay any money at all for an NFT.

This film is obviously meant as a Pilot Film for a possible franchise done in the style of yet another fast-fashion and sports cars globetrotting action-adventure, or at least, a globetrotting action-adventure that uses a lot of B-roll of exotic locals, so it plays a lot like an extended Fast and the Furious-themed infomercial for various affordable resort locations, a veritable tour of gaudy tourist-trap “fancy” hotels and commercial spaces favored by the moneyed, the cultureless, and the privileged. It tries to act like it’s self-aware in a “I’m too cool” kind of way, but the art direction of this film is the Ed Hardy Dragon jeans of cinema, and that’s the true window into this film’s soul.

Finally, the title of this film is “Lift,” which is also the term that the characters use to refer to heists. They also use “lift” as their “go” word, the signal they use to start the carefully coordinated dance that is one of their elaborate heists, so as a result, they say the word “lift” in this film a lot.

A lot.

As in, don’t make a drinking game out of it.

Finally, there’s an Interpol agent dedicated to bringing the suave thief and his team to justice, and guess what? She and the suave thief have a history, the kind of history that both Color Me Badd AND The Bloodhound Gang sing about. So, as I’m sure you can probably imagine, when the suave thief and the Interpol agent are forced to work together once again…?

Oh, I think you know what time it is…

Otherwise, the film is filled with the kind of false “ticking clock” drama that you usually see when a character gets their foot trapped in a hole or something as the zombies or whatever are slowly closing in, and everything hinges on whether or not they get their foot unstuck in time. It’s just a bunch of glib exposition and a series of “oh no, if they don’t do the thing in time, the heist is cooked! Will they do the thing in time? …yep. Yep, they got it. Oh no, another unforeseen complication! Will they do the thing in time? If they don’t do the thing in time, the heist is cooked! …yep, they got it. Whew, that was close… Oh no!”

Over and over.

To top it all off, the film’s climax turns out to be an underwhelming gotcha that you don’t even realize is the climax as it’s happening, followed by the denouement that’s a bunch of exposition where Kevin Hart explains that despite what you’ve just watched, it all went according to plan after all… those Wiley bastards… and while this is pretty typical for heist films in general, the fact that you didn’t realize the film was basically over at this point kind of takes the wind out of the satisfaction’s sails.

Then the credits start.

This film is so thin, so shallow, such a bare nod to being by-the-numbers, I couldn’t help but feel like maybe I didn’t pay enough attention while watching, but in my heart, I know I did. The truth is, this film isn’t just the cinematic equivalent of Ed Hardy Dragon Jeans, it is also the cinematic equivalent of an NFT.

Stupid, ugly, and has no value.

I didn’t expect this to be any good. These are the kind of films I watch before bed, because I know there’s not going to be a lot of active investment required. But I was hoping that it might at least be occasionally funny, or have a bit of cleverness, but nope, it’s just dumb and dull.

Don’t bother wasting your time on this one.