As “Lift” begins, Cyrus and his crew have stolen a valuable Van Gogh painting and fenced it to pay for the legitimate purchase of a one-of-a-kind NFT by a mysterious artist known as N8 (Jake Batalon). Interpol agent Gladwell, meanwhile, has them dead to rights on the theft, but her boss Huxley (Sam Worthington) forces her to make them a deal: Help them stop the transfer of $500 million in gold bars from war profiteer Lars Jorgensen (Jean Reno) to a deadly terrorist known as Leviathan.
To accomplish the mission, however, Cyrus and his team must borrow a jet from an eccentric billionaire (Oli Green), customize it into a stealth aircraft, and get it close enough to their target to be able to swap their radar signatures. Then, they’ll have their man inside air traffic control divert the flight to another location. This way they can make the ‘lift’ while a drone completes the flight to Zurich so as not to alert Jorgensen.
But Cyrus and his crew must also board the flight themselves, break into a secure vault in mid-air while avoiding a gang of ruthless henchmen, and transfer it to their own plane, all without Jorgensen ever finding out who they are. They hit their first snag when their engineer Luke bails on the mission, forcing them to improvise. But their attempt to get the plane diverted gets them noticed, and Jorgensen’s men move the gold to the stealth jet, ordering Cyrus and his team to Zurich at gunpoint.
