You know the Netflix formula: take a reliable box office trope – the big-budget action movie, the international spy thriller, the hitman and car chase bonanza – repackage it for the laptop screen with evermore disposable wrapping, attach a big name star with a hefty paycheck, release, move on. Such results – Sweet Girl, The Adam Project, The Gray Man, just to name a few – are often widely viewed yet under-discussed, throwaway blockbusters in the house style (overlit, frenetic) without much staying power or distinguishable flair. (To be fair to Netflix, this afflicts the other streaming services – does anyone remember Apple’s Ghosted?)
So there are well-worn and reduced expectations going into Lift, the latest collaboration between Netflix, the comedian Kevin Hart and a tried and true concept (in this case, clever thieves with expensive toys and menacing bad guys). The film does little to outrun them. You know from the first minute, in which Hart’s debonair conman Cyrus Whitaker strolls confidently into a Venetian art auction, that this is a streaming action flick – stock characters, music video flairs, wealth porn, limp flashes of personality appealing to a low common denominator.
