The new Kevin Hart heist movie, Lift, comes to Netflix this month (January 2024). We were already pretty interested in it after seeing the first trailer, and now Netflix has dropped a new trailer that ups the excitement even more. It looks like it has everything you'd want to see in a heist movie: great action and stunning set pieces, of course, but also the all-important motley crew of mismatched, wisecracking criminals to make the talky bits funny.
The new trailer shows more of the stellar cast, which includes some huge names: the cast list features Kevin Hart, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Vincent D'Onofrio, Úrsula Corberó, Billy Magnussen, Viveik Kalra, Yun Jee Kim, Jacob Batalon, Jean Reno and Sam Worthington.
Hart is Cyrus, the brains of the operation, while D'Onofrio apparently plays a master of disguise, which seems like it'll be a pretty good joke considering D'Onofrio is maybe the world's most uniquely recognisable man. Meanwhile, Jean Reno is a terrorist mastermind and Gugu Mbatha-Raw is the Interpol agent trying to take him down.
Why you'll want to get in this Lift
The thing about heist movies is that we've seen a lot of them already (and played a lot of GTA), so for a film to stand out it needs to do something a bit different. Logan Lucky did that by amping up the comedy (if you haven't seen it, you should: it's an absolute hoot with Daniel Craig playing against type and clearly having the time of his life) and Lift does it by putting the heist up in the air. No Ocean's Eleven subterranean vault here: it's in an airplane 40,000 feet above the ground. Something else is different too: in Lift the heist isn't happening to line people's pockets, but to prevent a terrorist attack. It's all very recent-Fast-and-Furious-movie, which makes sense since the director has previous experience there.
F Gary Gray started off making music videos for the likes of Ice Cube and Dr Dre before turning his talents to movies including his debut, Friday, the 2003 Italian Job remake and the riotous Straight Outta Compton. But he also took on 2017's The Fate of the Furious, which is one of the top 25 top-grossing movies of all time.
The reviews aren't in yet so we don't know whether Lift is going to soar or if it's going to struggle to get off the ground. But if this movie is as much fun as the trailer makes it look then it could well be the perfect winter escape.
Lift joins the ranks of new Netflix movies from 12 January 2024.
