YMMV / Lift (2024)

• Complete Monster: Lars Jorgensen is a wealthy businessman who became a feared terrorist mastermind, financing terrorist attacks around the world for his own monetary gain, including staging an attack on a New Zealand plane that killed 183 people. Jorgensen then starts planning with the hacker group Leviathan on staging a massive global flooding that would kill millions of innocent people. When Arthur Tigue rats him out, Jorgensen has his right-hand Cormac kidnap and torture him before having Arthur Eaten Alive by Cormac's attack dog. To have proof of Leviathan's abilities, Jorgensen has them flood Madrid, resulting in many deaths. Jorgensen then has his men board a commercial airliner going to Zurich that contains the gold with which Jorgensen will pay Leviathan, and Cormac takes Cyrus and his thieves with him, along with the gold, to Jorgensen's estate in Italy. When the plane crash lands on his estate and the Leviathan leader finds out one of the thieves is Interpol, Jorgensen shoots and kills her when she attempts to back out of the deal, and attempts to kill the rest of the thieves.
• Magnificent Bastard: Cyrus Whittaker is the charming boss of a crew of art thieves who steal art from those they believe deserve it. After a successful dual-running-heist where Cyrus staged the abduction of the artist N8 to drive up the price of the NFT he sells them, while also stealing a Van Gogh from the auction, Interpol uses the evidence from the theft of the latter to force Cyrus into a deal. For Interpol, Cyrus and his crew are tasked with stealing ten tons of gold from Lars Jorgensen as he's transporting it to Zurich to pay the terrorist group Leviathan. Cyrus concocts a plan to redirect the flight to Cortina so Interpol can unload the gold there. While that succeeds, he is taken hostage by Jorgensen's men, who steal Cyrus's plane to fly the gold to Jorgensen directly, Cyrus manages to defeat them and crashes the plane at Jorgensen's estate. While being held at gunpoint by Jorgensen, Cyrus records him murdering a member of Leviathan to get him arrested. Afterwards Cyrus reveals he had a second plan, where he had a crate of iron bars painted gold placed in the plane, allowing Magnus to steal the real gold for the rest of the crew.
• So Okay, It's Average: Rotten Tomatoes rates the film at 32% audience score and 29% critical score, with the common complaint raised by everyone being by how by-the-numbers it is, with a thin plot which doesn't really escalate with the action. The casting choices and the performance of everyone were generally praised all-round however, the chemistry of the crew was noted as a high point in several reviews, and even many of the critics who watched the film didn't really consider it terrible, just underwhelming and far too formulaic. This film also managed to stay in Netflix's Top 10 films in the UK for the entirety of January 2024 (frequently in the top 5), and only started losing places in February, so however many people found the film average, it's clear people did seem to enjoy it.
• Unintentional Period Piece: The heist in the opening revolves around an NFT created by a secretive, Banksy-like artist. This might have seemed like a timely idea when the movie was in development, but at the time it came out, NFTs in general had very much fallen out of favor with the public and many of them had plummeted in value, making the idea feel very dated.

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