MIDNIGHT REVIEWS Lift
Midnight Reviews features reviews and thought pieces written and edited by a parent, at night, after bedtime.
This afternoon’s movie…
“Old lady song, Daddy. With animals.”
“Which animals?”
“All of them.”
“All of them? What does the old lady do with these animals?”
“Eats them.”
“Ah.”
Review: I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly is a story worthy of David Cronenberg, as an elderly woman takes us through a series of tasks not seen since Edwardian freakshows. First, in reference perhaps to Jeff Goldblum’s fantastic performance in the 1986 horror/sci-fi, she swallows a fly, but then proceeds to digest beings of much larger calibre and complication.
The ending seems abrupt and yet should be seen coming from the very beginning.
The evening review…
LIFT (1hr 47mins)
Directed by: F. Gary Gray
Featuring: Kevin Hart, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Sam Worthington
Synopsis: Cyrus (Hart) is an international thief of astounding reputation. But when he and his crew are trapped into helping Interpol, they are forced to attempt a robbery of $500 million dollars’ worth of gold from a very dangerous man.
Review:
Going into Lift, I did not have the highest expectations. Kevin Hart’s previous efforts, a host of mediocre comedies, had hardly endeared themselves to me, despite the man often coming across as consistently and genuinely hilarious when doing the rounds on talk shows. But this is an effort to move into a new genre. With Lift, Hart eschews loud comedy for an out-and-out action film; an action film that was trying to promise the combination of big and silly that can work so well in a movie like this.
It surprised me then, that five minutes into Lift, I realised that I hated it. I recently published a post regarding ‘The Worst Movies of 2023’ wherein I implied quite heavily that spending time hating movies is both trivial and a little nonsensical.
Putting effort into hating something, film or not, takes it out of a person and whilst I admit spewing vitriol onto movies was something I enjoyed when I was younger, now I’m older the only thing I feel when I see a bad movie is tired. There isn’t a single part of me that actually enjoys dismantling a movie. It was going to take something quite special for me to destroy my new year’s resolution, to do away with cynicism and acid-tongued critique, but twenty days into the new year and here we are.
Utter tripe of the highest order.
The set up is several parts Ocean’s movies, with a dash of James Bond and Con Air, replete with heavy lashings of Fast and the Furious. So much so with this last example that F&F could stand for fan-fic, the most expensive piece of fan-fic ever made. Presumably avoiding the use of the word ‘family’ so as not to fall into a legal quagmire.
It seems hilarious that fifteen minutes in and we are subject to a scene where a bunch of billionaires are offering their millions for an NFT created by a Banksy stand-in. This opening sequence could have been created by artificial intelligence after the producers typed ‘popular right now’ into a search bar three years ago, lounging back as the script broke itself into existence. Utter tripe of the highest order.
After the film duly completes the obligatory action movie opening sequence activity, a sequence about as exciting as finding out your glass of water has a little orange squash mixed in with it, we are introduced to the criminal gang that explain they are not the average criminal gang. They are a criminal gang that steal worthwhile items in order to free them from imprisonment inside a billionaire’s Art Jail. They choose their targets carefully to ensure that the wrong crimes aren’t being committed.
At this point I asked myself the question: are we the viewers being treated like the billionaires in the first scene? That we are expected to buy into this flashy and worthless piece, with half-baked stylistic flourishes, shoddy CGI and a script as smug and self-congratulatory as its characters, making you wonder if everyone involved genuinely thought this movie was cool. Perhaps this is to do with direction and editing that smothers any moments that might actually be heartfelt or funny.
These sorts of action films are the ones that get everything wrong about the genre, taking in great sources of influence and taking away all the wrong lessons. Ridiculousness, but unentertaining as opposed to amusing. Cheap emotional manipulation that’s as deep as a puddle. Kevin Hart proclaims he is now an action star, before asking people to ‘look at my arms.’ This tells you all you need to know. We didn’t care about Nicolas Cage in Con Air, or Keanu Reeves in Speed, or Ripley in Aliens because they were bound and buff. These were compelling characters, something Lift forgot to bring along for the ride.
There is no reason to care about anything that is happening onscreen.
This movie looked at the scene in Con Air where a passenger plane crashes into Las Vegas and thought it’d be even better if there were cookie-cutter stakes and no one to root for. Script inconsistencies leave us with characters who think they are Robin Hood and his band of merry men, but the last time I checked Robin Hood didn’t laze around drinking champagne in the next building over from the King’s Court. Nor did he think that ‘liberating important pieces of art’ meant increasing their net worth.
The script is then broken up into clearly demarcated sections before the final third. Once we’ve digested an action scene, there will be a faux-emotional character backstory scene put into the trough, eventually reaching a sleek montage which hopes to break up the monotony.
It’s here that Lift shows its true colours as it attempts to reach for the heady heights of the Fast and the Furious movies, a bar it falls hopelessly short of. Each member of the gang shows off their skills but at this point the film has flatlined and there is no reason to care about anything that is happening onscreen.
Similar to Fast and the Furious’ Roman having a mental breakdown in Fast and Furious 9, Billy Magnusson as eternal optimist Magnus seems like a missed opportunity for something different in a film filled with so much monotony. Alongside Vincent D’Onofrio, these two are the most likeable, charming characters in the movie, and it’s a shame they don’t feature more.
Then we move to the third act, where we move into the plane carrying the aforementioned gold. It’s funny how the other half live; there is enough space in the first-class section of the plane for not one but two full-blown fight sequences to happen side-by-side. Despite this apparent exercise in efficiency, the film still feels forty-five minutes too long.
This shocking waste of time slows to a crawl as we are forced to listen to Hart explain a double cross that anyone who has seen a heist movie, any heist movie, will have seen coming. This is not a spoiler. This is a supposed twist that can be seen coming almost an hour before it eventually arrives.
Lift is the plane full of gold. Weighed down by gaudiness and style but nothing more than shiny, sleek, repetitive pieces flashed before our eyes. Large, loud and ultimately empty, Lift is not worth anyone’s time.
