This (let’s be kind) undemanding Netflix biff-bang-wallop from a reliable action director will share academic footnotes, though probably little more, with Carol Reed’s 1947 classic Odd Man Out. Contrary to legend, scenes from that film were not actually shot in Belfast’s Crown Liquor Saloon, but the Victorian gem was re-created for the shoot at Denham Film Studios. Both the actual exterior and the interior are conspicuously visible in Lift. It has somehow been moved to Belgium, but Kevin Hart and Gugu Mbatha-Raw are in the Crown all right. ‘Bout ye!
Making much use of the city’s Harbour Studios, Lift is precisely the class of mediocre fun F Gary Gray – director of The Fate of the Furious, and Law Abiding Citizen – has made his own over the past few decades. It is one of those heist movies that print everyone’s designated duty over their headshots in the opening minutes. So Hart is “The Boss”. Someone else is “The Pilot”. Inevitably in the current age, some poor sod – the one who spends the film staring at a progress bar – will be dubbed “The Hacker”.
I can’t recall if Mbatha-Raw (who really should be above this stuff) has a moniker, but, if you’re interested, she plays an Interpol agent who persuades Hart’s crew to, ahem, lift a large sum of gold from an aeroplane bound for evil Jean Reno’s vulgar mansion.
Apparently not satisfied with dear old Belfast – Donegall Place not grand enough, F Gary? – the film-makers move the characters from Venice to London to Tuscany as the tedious plan comes together. The thing is far too reliant on boring CGI. Nobody has anything approaching a personality. The attempts to get us interested in fictional NFT art are no more successful than the international cabal of idiots’ efforts to draw us to the real thing.
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For all that, there is a sort of honest energy to Lift that deserves just a sliver of respect. Mbatha-Raw, graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and Hart, graduate of Scary Movie 3, conjure flickers of chemical activity from the most unpromising ingredients. The opening chase through the Venetian lagoon ends with a coup so absurd and inexplicable that it would draw cheers from a dead gondolier. Not exactly a good film. Certainly a candidate for the week’s Netflix top 10.
