Netflix’s Lift continues a trend of movies for the streamer that are perfectly serviceable, if unremarkable depictions of their genre. There’s nothing about Lift that will stick with you after having watched it — but there’s also nothing particularly wrong with it, either. The movie as a whole is entertaining, it doesn’t go on for too long and it never tries to be anything other than what it is.
It’s just that the movie’s intentions clearly don’t go further than to be something you can put on and relax to, without much thought or emotion involved.
Even the movie’s “twist,” if it can be considered that, is telegraphed from a mile away. But it’s hard to argue against the fact that everyone in this cast, from Kevin Hart to the always delightful Gugu Mbatha-Raw, is having a lot of fun with the material. Úrsula Corberó‘s Camila, perhaps chief among the cast. We’d probably have fun if we were in her shoes, though we probably would never be in her shoes — which makes it even better that she is the one trying to fly the plane in the movie’s moments of high tension.
Of course, everything about Lift is not just borderline absurd, it crosses into full-on ridiculous at some point midway through. Everyone gamely continues to act as if half the things being uttered are not just possible, but likely (with some, like Yun Jee Kim being way more convincing than others), which you’ll either find hilarious or very annoying. There’s no middle ground here.
Sam Worthington, in particular, seems like he is somehow stuck in a different movie than the rest of the cast. That doesn’t just make his character easy to hate — which in the end, is what the movie requires of us — it makes him, at times, hard to watch.
Heist movies are supposed to be fun, and Lift mostly is. It’s sadly nothing more than that, which means it isn’t the kind anyone will feel too inclined to re-watch. Oceans Eleven once made us question every move a character made, with the movies requiring a full-on explanation of what was going on for viewers. Lift is nothing like that.
There is a team, yes, and there is indeed a heist. But the team is more or less bland, as much as they try to make them otherwise, and the relationships among them are too vague for anyone to even care about where they go from here. That even goes for Cyrus and Abby, who the movie would probably want us to root for.
If anything, we’re rooting against Sam Worthington and the Interpol. Not for any good reason, though, he’s just the one ruining our fun. And since the movie provides very little outside of that, well, we gotta take what we can get.
Agree? Disagree? What did you think of Netflix’s Lift? Share with us in the comments below!
Netflix‘s Lift is now available to stream.