Lift’s Cyrus Whitaker (Kevin Hart) is a master of the heist, a globe-trotting rapscallion who steals from the rich and gives to, well, other rapscallions. Director F. Gary Gray knows something about the subject. Over the course of his decades in show business, the Friday filmmaker has now made three heist films. In the ’90s landmark Set It Off, the target is banks in Los Angeles; in 2003’s slick remake The Italian Job, the loot is in Venice. And now there’s Lift, which takes robbery to a whole new level — 40,000 feet up in the air, to be exact.
“Since Set It Off and The Italian Job were made, criminal and law enforcement technology has improved significantly,” Gray tells Tudum. “In contrast to my earlier heist films in city settings, this heist in a massive plane at 40,000 feet introduces a whole new world of challenges.” Of course, Cyrus and co. are more than prepared to think on their feet. By film’s end, they’ve pulled off the heist of the century, right under all of our noses. Read on to find out how they — and the team behind Lift — made it happen.
The final stage of Lift’s heist ties all the way back to the very beginning of the film. Before Cyrus’ team was recruited to steal $500 million in gold from Lars Jorgensen (Jean Reno), they were on another job entirely, at an art auction in Venice. There, the team baffled the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) agent Abby Gladwell (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) by targeting something seemingly theft-proof — a camera-studded NFT exhibition by mysterious digital performance artist N8 (Jacob Batalon). Of course, for Cyrus, there’s nothing that can’t be stolen. They’ve soon kidnapped N8 and used the resulting kerfuffle to flip his NFT, netting a profit of tens of millions.
And the team doesn’t forget the lessons they learned on their Italian job. When the plane carrying the gold crashes on Jorgensen’s cliffside estate, their plan seemingly goes haywire. Jorgensen executes a terrorist underling in front of them and claims self-defense against intruders when the police arrive. All is lost… until tech expert Mi-Sun (Yun Jee Kim) programs the screen on the underside of their getaway aircraft to play video of Jorgensen committing the murder. He’s taken away, and the day is saved.
Evolving technology of the kind used first by N8 and then by Mi-Sun is what keeps Gray coming back to heist filmmaking. “I love this genre because it lets me unleash my imagination with cutting-edge technology, draw inspiration from diverse global cultures and experiences, and keeps my love for learning new things fired up,” he told Netflix.
The basis of any good heist is sleight of hand: keeping everyone’s eyes on the wrong thing while you get away with the real goods. For Cyrus and his crew, it’s even more important, as they’re working directly with Interpol on this particular caper. If they want to get away with the gold they’ve been recruited to steal from a terrorist cell, they’ll have to pull the wool over the eyes of the bad guys and the cops.
Gray considers it an enormous step up in difficulty from his previous heist sagas. “[This] was the most formidable heist, entwining not just with local law enforcement but also involving the Interpol and international military forces across multiple countries,” he says. “In contrast, Set It Off and The Italian Job focused solely on local law enforcement.”
To fool Interpol, Cyrus is counting on Magnus (Billy Magnussen) and Luc (Viveik Kalra), the sly comic duo on his team. Magnus, a safecracker, is the first to see the gold on the plane, before the film cuts away from him — only later do we find out he was using his off-camera time to dump the load off the plane and replace the gold with fakes. The film keeps its audience’s eye off the ball in the same way the gang fools Interpol.
Twists like these are a crucial part of Gray’s recipe for a killer heist. “I’d suggest embracing the element of surprise,” he said. “Keep the audience on their toes with unexpected twists and turns.” Twists like Luc’s part in the lift: The engineer initially seems to have pulled out of the job due to cold feet, but in reality he had a different gig, guiding the real gold to safety on the ground.
Thanks to Luc, the only thing left for the crew to do is to retrieve the dumped gold from a lake in the mountains and leave the load of gold-painted iron bars as a goodbye present for Abby’s Interpol boss Huxley (Sam Worthington). By this point, Abby is happy to hear it; Huxley is no longer in her good graces, after she learns he was willing to sacrifice her safety to get the gold.
This leads Abby to leave Interpol behind and head down a very different kind of path. After bickering with him throughout the film, Abby rekindles things with her brief undercover fling Cyrus and — just maybe — joins his crew for real.
For Gray, a little will-they, won’t-they romance is part of the fun of a genre all about surprise. “We’re aiming for a mix that mirrors life’s highs and lows,” he said of the pair’s fledgling love affair. “After all, love is the glue that holds it all together, weaving heist suspense and excitement with a touch of romance for a story that hits all the right notes.”
Next stop: payday. And maybe another heist? After all, the real appeal of a job like this isn’t the money — it’s the thrill of the chase. Although hopefully next time that chase will be a little bit closer to sea level.
Lift is now streaming on Netflix.
