Poor casting, chemistry stop heist film lifting off

From the perfect casting to the Venice opening and the iconic Mini Cooper chase, not to mention the smirking Edward Norton as the villain Steve, the film is a perfect template for what makes a successful light action heist film. And it's a template director F. Gary Gray has turned to again for his latest film, Netflix's Lift.

The new movie has so many elements familiar to its spiritual predecessor.

It too features a team who have successfully completed a heist in Venice coming together with a new female team member, who is normally on the other side of the law, to steal a whole bunch of gold from a shady character.

But sadly, the story and setting similarities, and a neat little preparation montage, are pretty much where the parallels end.

Lift doesn't have the same fun spirit of The Italian Job, and that just leaves the viewer wishing they were actually watching The Italian Job instead.

Like many recent Netflix action films and series, the over-reliance on CGI to build out important set-pieces comes out feeling inauthentic and disappointing, though Lift is not nearly as egregious in this manner as Heart of Stone was.

The film sees Cyrus Whitaker (a woefully miscast Kevin Hart), head of the heisting crew, teaming up with his ex Abby (Gugu Mbatha-Raw, trying her best but suffering from a complete lack of chemistry with her co-lead), an Interpol agent in the art crimes department, to steal half a billion dollars of gold from a commercial plane, mid-flight, so that it cannot be used to fund terrorism.

There's a typical mix of oddbods in their crew - the tech girl Mi-Sun (Yun Jee Kim), the master of disguise Denton/Oliver (Vincent D'Onofrio, not given nearly enough to do), the pilot Camila (Ursula Corbero, a nifty piece of casting in that the Spanish actress is best known as Tokyo in Money Heist), the safe cracker Magnus (the always fun Billy Magnussen) and 'extraction expert' Luc (Viveik Kalra).

Then there's also Abby's fellow agent Huxley (Sam Worthington, sporting his Aussie accent) whose character is so thin he's barely there, and the 'bad guy' Jorgensen (Jean Reno, who may as well have not shown up for all the impact he made).

There are moments where you can see what the film could have been. With more interesting characters, a lead more suited to grounding a film (Hart barely even has a quippy line, and doesn't get to do any of the sort of acting that has made him a comedy staple), and less reliance on CGI, Lift could have easily joined the likes of The Italian Job, Ocean's 11 and Inside Man as a fun, rewatchable heist caper. Especially under the steady hand of F. Gary Gray, whose filmography also includes Set It Off (another heist film), Straight Outta Compton, Law Abiding Citizen and The Negotiator, among others. But, unfortunately, it all comes off as too generic, derivative and lacking in spark. And it's really hard to look past the underwhelming lead performance and dire lack of chemistry.