A bunch of seasoned, high-tech thieves should steal a half billion {dollars}’ value of gold bars from a business airliner flying from London to Zurich. Their chief is Kevin Hart’s Cyrus, whom we see on the movie’s begin robbing a high-end artwork public sale in Venice. That is the sort of film that gooses its globetrotting with shiny aerial photographs of European locations: Venice, London, Brussels. All of them sort of run collectively. Hart deviates from his fast-talking, flabbergasted persona right here, which is welcome. However in positioning him as a roguish, romantic lead, “Raise” doesn’t give him something fascinating to do as an alternative.
Cyrus has some kind of previous with the Interpol agent who’s tailing his crew, Gugu Mbatha-Uncooked’s Abby Gladwell. The 2 share some awkward flirtation and never a lot chemistry. Upon orders from her boss (“Avatar” star Sam Worthington, who will get to be Australian for as soon as), Abby reluctantly recruits Cyrus and his crew to steal the gold, which rich bad-guy Jean Reno is transferring to a terrorist group to create disasters from which he can revenue afterward. Don’t fear if it doesn’t make sense: The entire level is to arrange a motive for these folks to get collectively and do some elaborate mid-air stunts. Every particular person has a selected job—Camila (Úrsula Corberó) is the pilot, Mi-Solar (Yun Jee Kim) is the hacker, Denton (Vincent D’Onofrio) is the grasp of disguise, and so forth—and that’s all there’s to them. They sit round and make enjoyable of one another in high-rise condos and warehouses the place the brilliant, flat lighting is at all times the identical and the banter strains to be enjoyably breezy. Billy Magnussen is the one exception because the safecracker, Magnus; he’s doing one thing delightfully goofy right here that’s paying homage to Brad Pitt in “Burn After Studying.” It’s as if he’s in a completely completely different film, and one that you just’ll want you have been watching as an alternative.
However then a lot of what constitutes the thrills and pleasure of “Raise” are blandly zippy modifying tips: sped-up sequences, zooms and montages. After some time, we will solely watch so many fistfights on airplanes. They develop repetitive and wearisome, as does the movie as a complete. Then once more, maybe “Raise” is greatest loved whilst you’re on a flight your self, with nothing higher to do and a necessity for one thing senseless to move the time.
On Netflix now.