| “ | Your friends are looking at kidnapping, wire fraud, identity fraud and transportation of stolen property. Did I leave anything out? | „ |
| ~ Agent Gladwell |
Abby Gladwell is the deuteragonist of the 2024 action heist film Lift. She is a dedicated Interpol agent who specialises in crimes and theft against valuable works of art but her job becomes more complicated when she must ask for the help of a renowned thief Cyrus to take down a dangerous crime lord.
She was portrayed by Guru Mbatha-Raw, who also played Noni Jean and voiced Seladon.
Biography[]
During one mission, Abby, pretending to be someone else, spent 5 romantic days in Paris with Cyrus, who at the time also concealed his true identity and who turned out to be a renowned art thief. Ever since this discovery she has been travelling the world trying to intercept and capture him.
She tracks him down in Venice where Cyrus and his team are capturing an NFT artist. She narrowly misses them but manages to apprehend Cyrus' friend Denton as well as collect evidence from Cyrus' accomplice stealing a Van Gogh painting in London. Abby wants to bring them all in but her superior, Huxley instead wants her to ask Cyrus for his help in taking down a crime boss and terrorist, Jorgensen, who is working on a deal with a cyber hacker to orchestrate damaging global war crimes.
Abby reluctantly tracks down Cyrus and begrudgingly asks for his help in exchange for wiping the crimes of him and his teams off the books and giving them a fresh start. He agrees, but only if she joins the team to also provide protection incase Interpol tries to turn on them. Together with Cyrus' team of thieves, they come up with a plan to steal a huge amount of gold from an airplane in mid-air.
While on-board, the heist seems to be going fine until their cover is blown and they must face off against Jorgensen's armed men. However, both she and Cyrus are captured and transferred to another plane alongside the gold. While in mid-air, Abby seizes the opportunity to fight back and successfully both evade being shot out of the sky by NATO and taking down Jorgensen's goons. The plane suffers a chaotic landing which drops them right outside Jorgensen's mansion.
Jorgensen pulls a gun out on them and immediately asks which one of them is Interpol, to which Cyrus protects Abby by giving himself up and tricks Jorgensen into confessing to his crimes on video. Interpol arrives and apprehends Jorgensen. Abby is furious to learn Huxley is the one who ordered NATO to try and shoot them down from the sky and punches him, quitting her job at Interpol in the process.
She joins Cyrus' team, who drives her out to a secret location and reveals that he and his team secretly stole the gold and replaced it with fake bars - which Huxley soon discovers. The team celebrates their victory and Abby and Cyrus rekindle their relationship.