Netflix And Chill: Lift (2024)

I don't dismiss every movie that debuts on a major streaming service. I believe, at least most of the time, that people keep trying to do their best to make a proper movie, and if their budget for it comes from a major streaming service then so be it. But there are some times when the films feel much more like "content" than actual movies. Lift is content, and it feels as if it has been worked on to cover every possible main demographic quadrant that Netflix wants to lure in.

Kevin Hart stars as Cyrus, a master thief leading a team of talented, but good-hearted (of course), criminals. Cyrus is so good that he is always three steps ahead of everyone, never getting caught with his fingers in the cookie jar, until he's caught with his fingers in the cookie jar. And he's caught just in time to be forced to conduct a major robbery on behalf of a government agency looking to screw up a deal being brokered by a dangerous criminal named Jorgensen (Jean Reno). Looking to get some extra insurance for his team, Cyrus agrees to take on the job as long as they are also joined by Abby (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), an Interpol agent he has some history with. And blah de blah de blah blah blahhhh.

The second film written by Daniel Kunka, who started his film career with the screenplay for the mediocre 12 Rounds (although maybe I will be more favourable to that film if I revisit it one day when in a better mood), this is flat and predictable throughout. Every time some obstacle cropped up to throw off the plan, I was able to figure out how it had already been considered, and incorporated, by our lead, because this is the kind of film in which the main character is always the smartest person in the room and the best person to be beside when the journey gets turbulent AKA the kind of role that Vin Diesel loves to play.

Although slightly better than the awful Heart Of Stone, the fact that F. Gary Gray is the director means that I should warn people that this is even worse than The Italian Job remake from 2023 (a film I know many people actively dislike, although I don't mind it). The action isn't staged well, the massive implausibility of each main sequence is glossed over with the standard editing techniques you'd expect and moments of the characters being cool, and a lot of the comedy falls flat.

Hart can be a lot of fun in movies, but it all depends on who he spends most of his screentime with. Put him alongside Dwayne Johnson and you get some great blockbuster entertainment. Put him in the midst of this motley crew and . . . not so much. Mbatha-Raw is a welcome presence, but saddled with the thankless role of being the authority figure who has a love/hate relationship with our lead. The other women (Úrsula Corberó and Yunjee Kim) are also slightly underused, with better moments written for the likes of Vincent D'Onofrio, Billy Magnussen, and David Proud. Jacob Batalon also does well, thanks more to his sheer force of personality than anything in the screenplay, but Sam Worthington, Jean Reno, Burn Gorman, and Paul Anderson all seem to be present to do nothing more than mess up the robbery in ways that Hart's character has already accounted for.

I'm sure that this will be an easy viewing choice for people who are browsing their many options and looking for something simple, fairly inoffensive, and entertaining. It's certainly simple, but I would argue that it's offensive in how it treats the viewer, and it's sadly not that entertaining. But I'll be generous with my rating, taking into consideration how much I enjoyed some of the smaller moments for the supporting cast members.

4/10

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Death Wish (2018)

I was not looking forward to Death Wish, the remake of the 1974 Michael Winner film, for a number of reasons. Despite me enjoying a number of his films, I didn’t think director Eli Roth would be a good fit for the material, Bruce Willis in any leading role nowadays gives me concern, and there were trailers that didn’t look promising. The one small shred of hope I had was that they’d kept enough of the ideas contained in the original script, by Joe Carnahan, to make this more interesting and relevant for a new generation.

Willis plays Paul Kersey, a surgeon who we first see losing his battle to save the life of a shot police officer before heading off to try and save the life of the man who shot him. That’s what he does. He saves lives. When not saving lives, he spends time with his family (his wife, Elizabeth Shue, and daughter, Camila Morrone, and also his brother, Vincent D’Onofrio) and seems to have everything in place for a content time. That all changes when a robbery leaves his wife dead and his daughter in a coma. Frustrated by the fact that it looks as if the police won’t make much progress, Kersey becomes a deadly vigilante, unsure of his own capability at first but quickly becoming more confident in his role.

There are a number of plus points here. Making Kersey a surgeon, rather than the architect he was in the original movie, is a good move. It further illustrates the transition from peaceful family man to gun-toting “grim reaper”, and it allows him to do more to cover his own tracks (he picks up clothing that is due to be disposed of by the hospital, he can treat some of his own wounds). There are also a couple of good points made about modern attitudes and accessibility to dangerous weaponry and information. These points may be hidden away beneath the sheen and the montage moments that throw AC/DC alongside the visuals, but they’re still there nonetheless, adding at least a modicum on intelligence and commentary that didn't have to be included.

Willis is slightly less comatose than he has been in so many other roles in the past decade, but he’s still the weakest link of the main cast. One moment that has him trying to convey the pain at what the criminals did to his loved ones is almost laughably bad, but he's better when growing more at ease with the death-dealing vengeance. D’Onofrio is as good as he always is, Shue and Morrone do well in their supporting roles, and Dean Norris puts in yet another great turn as the main investigating officer, a man who seems to be earnest in wanting to help and also starts to put two and two together as the criminal bodies start to pile up.

Roth does well in the director's chair. Everything moves along quickly, and predictably, enough and there are a few impressive moments of grue that serve as a reminder of who is at the helm. He makes some mis-steps, as he is won't to do in most of his movies, but makes a better fist of things than many other directors I could have considered for the job.

It's not as good as the original, which is expected, but this ends up being a perfectly serviceable reworking of the material for those who want to give it 100 minutes of their time (or thereabouts).

7/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy it here.
Or you can feel free to use those links to shop for anything else that catches your eye.

Strange Days (1995)

Although it may seem a bit dated now, with the action thriller cliches piled up and the focus on that Y2K sensation, Strange Days is yet another superior film from director Kathryn Bigelow. And it gets very dark indeed.

Ralph Fiennes plays Lenny Nero, an ex-cop who now makes a living selling experiences. Actual experiences. There's a gadget you can put on your head and Lenny will sell you recordings that will put you in the position of someone who has been through whatever you want to try out - sex with a gorgeous woman, breaking & entering, hardcore revelry, whatever you like. Unfortunately, someone recorded something very dangerous, which leads to people Lenny knows being killed. Lenny has to get to the bottom of things before it's decided that he'll also need taken out of the picture.

With a cast that includes Fiennes in the lead role, strong support from Angela Bassett, Tom Sizemore, Michael Wincott, and Juliette Lewis, and smaller roles for the likes of William Fichtner and Vincent D'Onofrio, Strange Days is a film not shy of talent in front of the camera. The first three mentioned there are the standouts, thanks to their positioning in the plot, but nobody lets the side down.

With Bigelow directing, and a script written by Jay Cocks and James Cameron, it's not shy of talent behind the camera either, and that translates into a slice of very slick entertainment.

The visual style of the film is remarkable, it's dark and gorgeous and cool throughout, and the pacing works well. The runtime is almost two and a half hours, but it doesn't feel as if it is ever outstaying its welcome. Graeme Revell creates an effective soundtrack to accompany the visuals, viewers are kept very much aware of the urgency of the situation, and twists and turns, although a tad easy to spot for afficianados of this kind of film, are interspersed nicely in between the set-pieces.

But what really sets this apart is the main idea being exploited. Some elements may have dated, including the tech on display, but this takes the concept of being able to experience the sensations that someone else is having and gives it an extra, VERY dark, twist. The fact that it manages to do so without making the whole thing seem too grimy and unpalatable is testament to the skills of everyone involved.

It's also worth bearing in mind, not unlike the various episodes of Black Mirror, that Strange Days shows us what can happen to technology when it can indulge the more warped whims of human nature. Something worth bearing in mind every time we try out VR, scour the internet, or just use one of the 160 apps on our smartphones. It doesn't take a huge leap in AI to turn machines against us. It just takes another human being.

8/10

UK people can get this lovely bluray here.
Americans have this DVD, for the moment.

El Camino Christmas (2017)

A Christmas movie with a fairly impressive cast of well-known names that attempts to do something different. Sounds good, right? But let's not beat around the bush here. It isn't.

Luke Grimes stars as a young man, named Eric Roth, who wanders into the town of El Camino, looking for his estranged father. A series of unfortunate coincidences lead to him being put in the cells for a night, then being freed by one officer before being aggressively pursued by another, and this leads to him ending up in a liquor store that is surrounded by police, who all believe him to be a dangerous criminal holding others hostage.

Here's the cast involved in El Camino Christmas - Grimes, Tim Allen, Kurtwood Smith, Dax Shepard, Vincent D'Onofrio, Michelle Mylett, and Kimberly Quinn. There are some other people onscreen, but that covers the core names I wanted to mention. Because that isn't a bad cast list at all, particularly when it comes to a non-theatrical Christmas movie. It's also worth saying at this point, lest I forget, that none of the cast actually do a bad job. Seriously. They're all good in the roles that they're given.

Which makes it obvious that the problems stem from the talent behind the camera. Director David E. Talbert also wrote and directed the poor Almost Christmas so I already know that he's not my go to guy for festive fare. But blaming him alone wouldn't be fair. In fact, blaming him for being unable to elevate the horribly hackneyed script isn't fair at all, despite my disappointment with his previous Christmas movie.

Writers Theodore Melfi and Christopher Wehner should share the blame. The latter has nothing else to his credit at the moment, but Melfi started this cinematic year so well with his work on Hidden Figures. Which means I have to make this unusual statement. If I was a teacher, viewing a final project that Melfi and Wehner had worked on together, I would be forced to give that project a low mark and then keep the pair separated for the rest of the year, allowing me to see how much better each one can do without the influence of the other. Someone obviously thought this was a cool idea, a Christmas movie that has all of the characters and a dash of the spirit of the season with the minimal of festive trimmings. They were wrong.

There's no rule saying that a Christmas movie has to have all of the familiar elements in place to succeed. It just takes more work to make that happen. More than just a script that seems to be winking at viewers and assuring them that something is coming along in time for the finale that will make everything preceding it worthwhile. Which would be okay IF something did come along to make it all worthwhile.

Technical competence and that solid cast explain my fairly generous rating. Not one to make a high priority, even throughout December.

4/10

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Escape Plan (2013)

You don't watch a movie starring Sylvester Stallone, or Arnold Schwarzenegger, and expect logic and common sense to be the top priorities. I get that, I really do. But Escape Plan, which stars both men in lead roles, is even sillier and full of plot holes than it needs to be. It's so careless that the enjoyment factor is slightly ruined.

Stallone plays Ray Breslin, a man who can escape from pretty much any prison that's been designed. He's so good at it that he's made it his job. He gets incarcerated, under a false identity. He gets out. The prison gets a report that details the weaknesses in their security. When he's offered a bumper fee, Ray allows himself to be grabbed and thrown into another prison. This time, however, things are even tougher than usual. His colleagues have no idea where he is, the prison warden (Jim Caviezel) knows of his reputation and wants to make sure that he doesn't leave, and the prison is full of transparent cells, making for a much tougher challenge. The only plus point comes in the unlikely form of a prisoner named Rottmayer (Schwarzenegger).

Directed by Mikael Hafstrom, and written by Miles Chapman and Jason Keller, this is a film that really could have had anyone behind the camera. There doesn't seem to be any individual style stamped on the thing. That's fine, however, because everything is geared towards getting Sly and Arnie working together onscreen, and that is often enough to carry the whole thing along. Yes, the two worked together on The Expendables movies, but this time around they get to do more than reel off one-liners and cash in on nostalgia.

Both of the leading men are great. They've still got it when it comes to delivering the action. I've never been a fan of Jim Caviezel - I can't think of a leading man with less charisma in the past couple of decades (well, maybe Edward Burns, but that's it) - and, while he does slightly better than usual here, this is another performance that hasn't converted me. It's a part that's crying out for Eric Roberts, of course, and Caviezel sure as hell ain't no Roberts. Faran Tahir does just fine with his part, another prisoner who ends up being important to the grand plan, and Sam Neill is great as the prison doctor, a man who tries to do his job without thinking of the bigger picture. Vincent D'onofrio, Amy Ryan and Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson also do well as Sly's colleagues.

Escape Plan is entertaining. It doesn't require too much concentration, the cast have fun and you will root for Sly to win the day. It's a shame, then, that everything wasn't just tightened up ever so slightly. The details revealed to viewers that are supposed to make you think "aaahhhhhhhhh, very smart" just end up highlighting the fact that it all hinges on good fortune and other characters being blind, stupid, or both. The fact that there isn't even one great set-piece is another disappointment.

You'll be able to watch and enjoy this movie, but I don't think it's one that will end up being revisited all that much. Disposable fun, boosted by the charismatic leads.

6/10

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