Luther: The Fallen Sun
James Bond is not necessary for Idris Elba. He has John Luther.
In the interview, he said that the British actor who had been playing this role in television for almost 10 years will be starring in “Luther: The Fallen Sun,” a feature length continuation of BBC crime drama, shifting all the attention from fan casting online to another equally absurd part which is already his own.
Detective Chief Inspector John Luther, a rogue copper investigating London’s most gruesome homicides, has been an enduring hero for Elba with different shades of gray from his long wool overcoat down to his moral compass that seem simultaneously timeless and tailored. Squinting and shambling through ghastly crime scenes with hands deep in pockets, Luther was conceived as a marriage between Columbo and Sherlock Holmes, but it’s Elba’s changeable screen presence rumbled gravitas meets movie-star smolder that gives the character something more.
Brilliant and troubled, rough and ready, on the edge of darkness. Luther is a larger than life protagonist, one of those deeply brooding detectives who can break any rule if it means catching a killer, whose uncompromising sense of justice puts him at odds with colleagues. (None of them can claim to keep so cool while holding a suspected witness over the balcony until they talk.) No one embodies Luther’s psychological torment he breaks law in order to enforce it quite like Elba does; an endlessly watchable actor who can dig into archetype without making obvious choices or even appearing to lower character’s ever-present guard, bringing forth beneath surface currents passion-rage-pain unknown. Every single season until now represents Idris’ peak performance level as far as acting goes but surely enough there are many other pleasures awaiting viewership such as comfortability shown throughout “The Fallen Sun” where once again this man throws over his ridiculously broad shoulders that coat he’s made us so used to seeing.
The last time we saw our beloved Detective Chief Inspector John Luther (Idris Elba), he was being handcuffed by his former boss, Martin Schenk (Dermot Crowley), after crossing one too many extralegal lines in the show’s fifth series finale. “The Fallen Sun” opens with Luther in prison, although the circumstances of his internment have been altered. In the film’s telling, the good detective’s investigation into the disappearance of a young janitor has led his latest adversary a teeth gnashing ghoul of a tech billionaire played by Andy Serkis to leak a dossier to the media that indicts Luther for any number of bendable offenses from breaking and entering to suspect intimidation, tampering with evidence and bribery. (He did it all, but there’s an excuse, if only somebody gave him a chance.)
Still on top of mind for Serkis’ aforementioned ghoul David Robey is poor Luther, whom he taunts over his failure to prevent eight strangers from being abducted, hanged and arranged in a manor that erupts into flame as their parents arrive. The killer makes sure each victim’s parent knows what their child died for before torching both them and the house they’re standing in. For this reason among others, Luther breaks out during a prison transport after such an inevitably incendiary kerosene soaked cellblock riot sequence that getting him to another facility becomes impossible without burning down half of England. (“Fallen Sun” earns its early indication of pulp theatrics stripes when Luther shields himself with a flaming mattress as he brawls his way down a corridor full of bloodthirsty inmates.)
Back on the rain slicked streets of London towne now cum again being stalked by various killers who are drawn there like moths every time Idris Elba lights up his coat collar, Luther hunts for clues as to Robey’s next atrocity exhibition while being hunted by his former colleagues on the police force, including replacement DCI Odette Raine (Cynthia Erivo) and Schenk, consulting for the department as its one-man Luther library. This setup is not new to “Luther,” which had Elba’s hero on the lam from every cop in England by the end of its first series. But there is a sense of weariness to this latest runabout that feels cumulative though “The Fallen Sun” is consciously framed as a cinematic reintroduction for the character in preparation for future theatrical releases, knowing Detective John Luther requires an understanding of his sordid history with seductive psychopath and potential soulmate Alice Morgan (Ruth Wilson), among other things and anyone who wonders why such decisions have left him so sad can start here. He has made choices before, bad ones, and he wakes up every day next to them.
Luther is right at home in the dark and gothic version of London presented by the film, where every shadowy street and unwatched suburban setting teems with villains so twisted they’d make Batman blink. There are wicked occultists who abduct young mothers to suck their blood, masked fetishists who lie under victims’ beds, then silently slither into view when the lights go out, even clown-masked killers who assault women walking home alone at night. These adversaries are super criminals, terrorists turned monstrous, transforming his city into a Gotham like metropolis of fear and filth that only validates his vigilantism.
Serkis is best known for motion-captured performances that tease out the humanity in intelligent animals; here he’s every bit as magnetic as a sadistic wolf in sheep’s clothing an all seeing one percenter whose reach will never exceed his grasp. Heading up a blackmailing operation that has surrounded him with an army of henchmen fearful their own deepest secrets could get out, Robey is an absurd megalomaniac even before we learn he keeps a Norwegian lair befitting a Bond villain one none too subtle touch among many (this being a “Luther” installment with more than respectable budget behind it) that lifts Luther out of his already heightened pulp surroundings and into an action sandbox that feels all the more winkingly silly for its sudden self awareness. As a series, “Luther” frequently dealt in extremes, challenging Elba’s unstoppable vigilante against ever more depraved psychopaths as if searching for his outer limits, faced with such cartoonishly cruel arch villainy as this, Luther’s eventual admission to a reproachful former colleague that he broke the law because he “couldn’t see any other way to do what had to be done” registers less as confession than hero’s mantra.
Returning director Jamie Payne (who helmed series five) extends the stark and heightened atmosphere of his previous “Luther” episodes even as the action set pieces one turning Piccadilly Square into a war zone; another taking London to a frozen house of horrors scale up, with veteran cinematographer Larry Smith bathing the film’s coldest, creepiest tableaux of domestic terror in a suffusing twilight. As in previous entries, Luther’s red tie a signature accessory is at times the brightest splash of color on screen. Neil Cross, the show creator and sole writer, scripts “Luther” with an approach so luridly menacing it approaches the gritty camp of recent DC superhero movies, a sensation that Lorne Balfe’s taut yet pulsing score only exacerbates.
For all its scowling atmosphere and hard-boiled dialogue, though, what chiefly gives this film its kicks are the actors’ unerring instincts; some are returning to roles they’ve been playing for over a decade. When Elba shares screen time again with Dermot Crowley as former superintendent Martin Schenk, both actors bat self-serious cornball dialogue back and forth with the easy rhythm and good humor of scene partners who have been doing this awhile. They’re professionals at work, these two pros who know they’re out to nail their nastiness.
And Erivo fits comfortably into that equation too as a detective initially tasked with catching Luther; she brings enough matter of fact gravitas to go toe to toe with her co star hero even if said twist demands past breaking point by graphic novel logic standards. That “The Fallen Sun” ultimately feels more episodic than climactic is very much by design; Idris Elba has made no secret of his hopes to play Luther across several big screen outings this being just the first among them.
“The Fallen Sun” is going to be on Netflix soon with the rest of this TV series. For fans, it’s a logical next step; for new viewers, however, this season can also work as an entry point and through that playfully acknowledges Elba’s Bond bona fides while asserting, not unconvincingly, that Luther’s world is quite enough even as it sends the character off in a new direction.
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