Netflix gives us a lift (sort of)

There is a place in life for films like “Lift.”
That place, of course, is a movie theater – big screen, comfy seat, tasty popcorn, forces conspiring to create a suspension of disbelief.
But “Lift” (shown here) alas, has just debuted on Netflix. In our living room, it’s kind of fun if we remember not to think about it too much.
The film opens with Cyrus (Kevin Hart,shown here) and his team trying a shaky scheme involving an art auction, the Venice canals, a speedboat and lots of high-tech touches. The plan works (barely), but is easy for Abby (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), an Interpol cop, to trace.
That leads to the real story: To avoid arrest, Cyrus’ team must steal $500 million in gold from a plane, before it reaches terrorists.
That takes some doing, but Cyrus is sort of up to it. So is F. Gary Gray (“Straight Outta Compton,” “The Fate of the Furious”), the director.
Before “Lift” is done, they’ll have had two fierce fight scenes inside a twirling, twisting jet plane. Both feel solid; we’re sort of ready to believe that the 5-foot-4 Hart and the slender Mbatha-Raw could hold their own against thugs who are large and armed.
Netflix tends to be pretty good at light adventure, making sure there are solid scripts. Among mini-series, “Florida Man” was terrific, the two “Lincoln Lawyer” seasons were fairly good, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “Fubar” was adequate.
And stand-alone adventure movies? “Glass Onion” (Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out” sequel) was brilliant. The “Lift” script, by comparison, is merely OK.
It’s a handy device on which to hang a bunch of action scenes. In a theater, with disbelief suspended, it might have seemed pretty good.