If you like heists, a little bit of comedy, gold and NFTs you may want to consider watching Lift. It is a new Netflix movie. The main character Cyrus is played by Kevin Hart. Cyrus runs a crew of thieves. Just like in any heist movie crew members have their own special skills they bring to the table to make heists success. While I would consider Lift to be one of the best heist movie, it certainly is entertaining. The movie starts in Venice where the initial heist is going to happen. The team is after an NFT that is being auctioned. However, instead of stealing the NFT, they have different plans.
Spoiler Alert: If you haven't see the movie yet, you may want to stop reading here. This post may contain spoilers. Feel free to come back after watching to share your thoughts.
The initial scenes take place in beautiful Venice. One of the top auction houses is hosting auction of various types of art, among which there is also NFT listed to be auctioned. As the team prepare to participate in the auction, Interpol is alerted of their presence and monitoring their each move. Interpol is ready to catch them in action. However, instead of stealing the art pieces or the NFT, they bid to buy it and end up winning the NFT for $20 million. At this very time alarms go off, chaos everywhere, Interpol is after the team, but they are able to escape, initially. While they are moving out, they end up taking the NFT artist who happens to be there as well with them. After few minutes of chasing on the boats, Cyrus and team escape the chase and make it to their yacht.
The artist who created the NFT is initially confused of what is happening, but nothing seem to be posing danger to him. He feels comfortable to remove the mask and celebrate the sale of his NFT for $20 million. While the team was busy buying the NFT in the auction and kinda kidnapping the NFT artist, two other members of the team were busy back in London stealing another art piece, which was sold in advance for $20 million to pay for the NFT. After all this action, Interpol issue a warning and announce that NFT artist was kidnapped. It turns out that was the plan all along. The next day, they find out, because all the news were showing that the artist was kidnapped price for the NFT went up to $89 million, at which price thieves were happy to sell. When the artist find out he is in the news, he is confused again. But once Cyrus explains what happened and that he made $27 million more, he is back in celebrating mood.
That is where the story of the NFT heist ends. The main story of the movie wasn't about the NFT heist, but something even bigger. Even though the team planned everything well down to the details and executing the plan flawlessly, Interpol was still able to connect the London heist to them. Interpol was able to catch the buyer who ended up telling them everything. At the same time Interpol had another crisis happening. Lars Jorgenson, a wealthy banker who makes money on funding terrorists and criminal activities was entering a deal with a hacker group. This hacker group somehow was able to gain access to top secret systems and create floods and natural disasters. Hackers only accepted gold as a payment. For this payment to happen Jorgensen had to fly half a billion dollars worth of gold to Zurich. If the deal was to happen, this would mean many people could die. Interpol decides to make a deal with Cyrus and team. In exchange to clearing their record, they want the team to steal the Jorgenson's gold while it is being transferred to Zurich on a plane.
Cyrus faces a dilemma. He needs to decide which path to take. Helping the Interpol stealing the Jorgenson's gold would free him and his team from legal consequences, but it also means they would become Jorgenson's target who is known not to show mercy to those who wrong him. Not helping Interpol means Cyrus and his team will spend many years in prison. He manages to figure out a third option. They agree to help the Interpol and come up with a complicated plan to steal the goal. As things unfold, they are able to execute crazy plane maneuvers, survive the fight with Jorgenson's men, land the plane in Jorgenson's estate, capture Jorgenson criminal actions and confessions on video, and remain alive. They were able to get Jorgenson caught, and deal with hackers never happens. At the same time they had a different plan in place, they were stealing the gold for themselves and Interpol ends with fake gold.
Let me know what you think if you have watched the movie already.