In Lift, a professional thief and his crew are roped into attempting the most dangerous heist of their careers. The film is now streaming on Netflix.
Warning: This article contains heavy spoilers
Plot summary
Abby Gladwell is an Interpol agent who is chasing a thief named Cyrus. Cyrus has a talented crew that helps him carry out his plans successfully.
The crew includes a pilot, Camila; a hacker, Mi-sun; a safecracker, Magnus; an engineer, Luke; and a master of disguise, Denton.
Cyrus makes an appearance at an auction and bids on a single-edition NFT of a digital artist, N8.
Cyrus wins the NFT, and that is when his crew creates a distraction, allowing Cyrus to slip away with N8. Abby chases Cyrus but fails to catch him.
Cyrus’ crew steals a Van Gogh painting in London, sells it on the black market, and uses the money to buy the NFT. After paying N8, Cyrus and his crew party with him.
However, Interpol believes that N8 has been kidnapped. The news of his kidnapping causes the price of N8’s NFT to skyrocket.
Cyrus’s crew is able to sell it for $89 million, but Denton gets arrested by Interpol. Cyrus then sends Abby a box that contains their pictures, among other things.
It turns out that Abby and Cyrus met in Paris a year ago. They were both undercover and fell in love with each other. The relationship lasted not more than five days.
Although Abby is able to find the buyer who bought the stolen Van Gogh painting, her boss, Huxley, does not allow her to arrest Cyrus.
Huxley tells Abby that Lars Jorgensen, a dangerous man who has made his fortune by putting his money in terror groups, is planning a strike on water.
For that, he has joined hands with a hacker group known as Leviathan. With their help, he can flood a city or even dry up a country.
Interpol does not know anything else about Jorgensen’s plan, which is why they cannot stop the attack, but they do know that he needs to pay Leviathan in gold.
Jorgensen will be moving gold worth $500 million from his vault in London to Zurich. As moving one’s gold is not illegal, Interpol cannot do anything to stop him.
Huxley wants Cyrus’ crew to steal Jorgensen’s gold, and it is Abby who has to convince Cyrus to take the job.
Abby meets Cyrus and informs him that he and his crew will get full immunity if they agree to work for Interpol, but if they refuse, they will be arrested for stealing the Van Gogh painting.
Cyrus and his crew are reluctant to steal from someone as dangerous as Jorgensen, but they do not have much choice in the matter.
Cyrus agrees to steal Jorgensen’s gold but insists on having Abby on his team to ensure that Interpol does not leave them to die when the time comes.
Once Abby joins Cyrus’ crew, he informs her that he plans to steal the plane that will be transporting the gold by swapping its radar signature with a private jet, which they will make invisible.
Like a good leader, Cyrus helps his crew solve the problems that they face in their respective tasks. He encourages them at every step.
For their plan to be successful, Cyrus needs an insider in ATC in Brussels, so Abby introduces him to a man named Harry.
When Cyrus offers to pay him out of his own pocket, Harry agrees to help them. Cyrus then meets Huxley, who tells him that Jorgensen is moving his gold in ten days.
Leviathan has already hacked Madrid’s main water grid and caused flooding. The cyberattack kills people, and it is the first of many to come.
Cyrus, realizing how dangerous their job is going to be, asks his crew to back out. He is prepared to do the job on his own.
However, Cyrus’ crew chooses to stick with him. They refuse to leave him to do the job by himself, and Abby realizes that Cyrus’ crew loves him.
Ending explained:
The crew faces challenges
On the day of the mission, Luke abandons the crew at the last minute. He decides that he does not want to risk his life, so he does not board the flight.
Camila flies the private jet that Cyrus and Abby have borrowed from a tech billionaire. Abby and Cyrus somehow manage to keep their plan on track despite the challenges.
With Harry managing things on the ground, the crew successfully switches the radar signs. Harry then instructs the pilot to make an emergency landing at a small airstrip in the Alps.
The sudden landing makes Jorgensen’s men, who are on the plane, suspicious. They assemble a gun and threaten the crew to get the pilot to take the plane to Zurich.
Cyrus and Abby intervene. They fight the armed men while Magnus breaks the safe that contains the gold.
As instructed, the pilots land the plane on the airstrip in the Alps, with Camila following closely behind.
Cyrus and Abby defeat their opponents, only to come face to face with another armed man. Jorgensen’s men catch Magnus and Camila as well, ruining Cyrus’s plan.
Reaching Jorgensen’s estate
Jorgensen’s men inform him that they have captured the thieves who tried to steal his gold. Instead of killing them, Jorgensen instructs his men to bring them to him.
Jorgensen’s men move the gold and their captives to the private jet and force Camila at gunpoint to fly it to Tuscany.
On the other hand, Mi-sun and Denton have not blown their cover. They stay behind on the other plane, with their comms still connected to the rest of the crew.
Camila wants Interpol to find them, so she shakes off the meticulously put-together stealth mode that made their private jet invisible.
Interpol locates the jet, and Huxley, wanting to prevent the deal between Jorgensen and Leviathan, asks NATO to shoot it down.
After trying and falling to establish contact with the jet, NATO jets prepare to shoot it down, but Harry informs them that there are civilians on board.
Abby confirms this by displaying the same message on the LED screen underneath the jet. NATO opts not to shoot down the plane and instead plans to intercept it upon landing.
Camila, Abby, and Cyrus fight Jorgensen’s men. They manage to get rid of them, but not without Camila breaking her wrist, which means that she cannot fly the jet anymore.
Furthermore, the jet’s hydraulic pump is damaged. With Camila instructing them, Abby and Cyrus barely manage to land it, but unfortunately, they land on Jorgensen’s estate.
Jorgensen’s arrest
Leviathan threatens to steal all of Jorgensen’s money if he fails to deliver the gold they were promised. The gold is brought straight to his estate, thanks to Cyrus, Abby, and Camila.
Cyrus had made his crew fit cameras on the private jet, and now he signals Mi-sun to hack into those cameras and record everything that takes place on Jorgensen’s estate.
A Leviathan representative finds out that one of the thieves is an Interpol agent and refuses to work with Jorgensen, which leads to Jorgensen killing the representative.
When Jorgensen questions Cyrus, Camila, and Abby, Cyrus claims that he is the Interpol agent to protect Abby.
However, before Jorgensen can kill Cyrus, the police arrive there. When Jorgensen says that he was just defending his property, Mi-sun plays the recording of him killing the Leviathan representative on the jet’s screen.
Jorgensen is arrested, and Huxley arrives there. Now that they have finished the job, Cyrus and Camila say goodbye to Abby.
Where is Jorgensen’s gold?
Abby then finds out that instead of trying to save her, Huxley was the one who ordered the plane to be shot down in the first place, leading to Abby quitting her job.
Abby leaves with Cyrus and Camila. Weeks later, Abby and Cyrus, who are now dating, are seen driving somewhere to meet the rest of the crew.
Cyrus confesses that he fell in love with Abby, not the person she was pretending to be, when they first met in Paris.
Abby had earlier told Cyrus that she had become an Interpol agent because someone had stolen a Hockney print that was displayed in her school.
Abby wanted to catch the thief, but she never got around to do it. Cyrus tells her that he found the thief and bought the Hockney print from him for Abby’s school.
On top of that, Cyrus tells her that Luke never abandoned the crew. It was all part of Cyrus’ plan to steal Jorgensen’s gold for himself and his crew.
After breaking the safe, Magnus swapped the crate containing real gold with the artificial gold that Cyrus had brought to the plane.
He pushed the crate containing real gold out of the plane, and it was Luke’s job to land the crate safely. The gold that Interpol got from the jet was fake.
Cyrus and Abby meet up with the rest of the crew. They have gathered there to celebrate their success and take their gold. The film ends with the crew welcoming Abby and Cyrus kissing her.
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