Lift is… a marginal Netflix international thriller that you’ve seen – or skipped – before. This time it’s a heist film but it might as well have been a spy thriller or roll the dice for a similar genre. It might be better than some but a lot worse than others.

The flick miscasts Kevin Hart as a suave international art thief with a heart of gold. He and his crew are tasked with running a mid-air heist to steal some gold that is being delivered to an international bad guy. See? Hearts of gold so the audience isn’t challenged with out allegiances.

There’s two primary problems with this flick. The first is that the first half is just kind of boring and over-shot with a tiresome abundance of random speed ramps of the type I thought died a couple decades ago. There’s nothing well-paced, snappy, or particularly interesting about it.

The second half – the actual heist – is considerably better (as long as you don’t think about the logic). It has snap and charm within strict limits. It’s never good enough to save the film but at least it raises its quality into the “ok, so I’m not bored any longer” territory.

The other problem… Kevin Hart. I don’t know if its just beyond his range as an actor of if he’s just played one too many hyper-kinetic little funny men, but he’s not at all convincing as suave, charming, sexy international art thief who gets all the girls.

At least the rest of the cast is… interesting. Gugu Mbatha-Raw may not be able to play romantic lead with Hart so well, but she’s otherwise competent and easy on the eyes. We also get Vincent D’Onofrio who largely just sits around in silly wigs, Billy Magnussen who shows so much range his character is named Magnus, Jacob Batalon for a hot second, Jean Reno for a few extra seconds, and Sam Worthington who finally gets to use his Australian accent (take that for the highest compliment).

This isn’t a very good movie but it’s a multinational action/heist flick so it’ll probably earn enough eyeballs to convince Netflix to go ahead with Burn Notice 5: The Lifting of the Grey Men. It’s mostly a waste of time but there’s some fun jaunty bits in the back half that might help bring it home.

Score: 71