Kevin Hart’s Terrible New Heist Movie ‘Lift’ Steals Two Hours of Your Life

Within seconds, F. Gary Gray’s Lift (on Netflix Jan. 12) foreshadows the kind of film it’s going to be, thanks to an uncanny music cue reminiscent of a famous classical piece: Mozart’s Symphony No. 40. The music, like the movie, feels familiar, but only because it’s riffing on something better. This composition introduces an expensive art heist in Venice involving a sprawling crew, whose members all have their own unique skills and who are all eventually roped into a blockbuster scheme: one big, final job! In other words, the premise of dozens of other heist films that radiate more style and move with more clockwork precision.

Lift, however, has the distinction of being an experiment, too, in that its star and producer, Kevin Hart, attempts to play a suave leading man, à la George Clooney in Ocean’s 11. Unfortunately, this turns out to be a severe miscalculation—not because Hart lacks the range, but because of the disconnect between the writing and his performance. On paper, his art swindler, Cyrus Whitaker, reads like one of Hart’s typical energetic, comic-relief characters—an insecure underdog biting back with impromptu jabs. However, Hart’s withheld demeanor in the role renders Cyrus a non-character with no charisma; the aim is self-assuredness, but the result is more like Hart doing a drowsier version of his regular comedy routine. His occasional banter about the value of art (and about fancying himself an artist) remains thoroughly unconvincing.

Evading Interpol—led by Agent Abby Gladwell (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), with whom he has romantic history—Cyrus and his multinational crew of skilled misfits target half a billion dollars in gold as it’s being transported in the hull of a passenger plane. The promise of a mid-air heist (or “lift,” as Cyrus calls it) ought to make for a unique spectacle, given all the turbulent possibilities not usually found in a casino vault. But only 20 odd minutes in the middle of the 105-minute runtime are actually spent aboard the aircraft in question.

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