Back in action
Gritty 'Luther: The Fallen Sun' rises on Idris Elba's performance
DCI John Luther has been one of actor Idris Elba’s more successful and popular screen identities, spawning five British series, concluding in 2019. It’s therefore no surprise that he’s back for more violent, anguished and more-thanborderline-vigilante action in the Netflix film “Luther: The Fallen Sun.” Andy Serkis aka Gollum and Caesar is also aboard for this outing as another “Luther” mad serial killer, who murders some victims horribly and blackmails others using some shameful secret about them to force them to help him in his reign of terror.
In many ways, this new adversary is a modern-day, serial-killing Moriarty with monstrous tendrils reaching out to ensnare unsuspecting victims all over London. Distinguished Irish actor Dermot Crowley also returns as Luther’s now retired former boss DCI/DSU Martin Schenk, a father figure for the perennially lonesome singleton Luther. Creator Neil Cross, the author of the screenplay for the latest outing, has described Luther as a cross between Sherlock Holmes and Colombo.
But as the villain of this outing demonstrates, John Luther is also London’s
Dirty Harry and by exposing Luther’s vigilantism the villain gets Luther stripped of his badge and thrown into a fictional Hawksmoor prison, where he is not exactly a popular inmate. Back at headquarters, DCI Odette Raine (a quite good Cynthia Erivo) of the council flats is the new boss. The plot will involve a group of people falling from high places in Piccadilly Circus and starting a panic, “extreme submission porn,” a website dubbed the Red Bunker and a nasty person from Estonia. Luther will retrieve his signature Volvo, his (is it a sport jacket or a coat?) monochrome, patterned outerwear. The sadistic atrocities pile up almost as fast as the improbabilities. The action in this installment, including treating injuries with Superglue and that old standby duct tape, suggests that Luther is as much Rambo and the Energizer Bunny as he is Harry, Holmes and Colombo. A foot chase in the Underground is nicely staged.
While Serkis brings a mysterious and, yes, Gollum-like delight to the pain that he can unleash upon those he decides to destroy, including the villain’s own, awfully firescarred wife, he like most of Luther’s other nemeses is no match for Ruth Wilson’s insane Alice Morgan, the madwoman who developed a crush on Luther, an echo of the Hannibal Lecter-Clarice Starling courtship.
“Luther: The Fallen Sun” is right to point out that troll farms can be a new Inquisition and not the Monty Python sort either. Veteran TV director Jamie Payne (“The Alienist”) delivers some nice touches, including a phalanx of computer screens in opening shots and a group of electronicallylinked, mostly white perverts in climactic scenes otherwise set in a snowbound Norway. One of the screenplay’s less credible developments is how the police are after fugitive Luther while fugitive Luther is after the serial killer and how sometimes Luther and the coppers work together. It’s not very likely, is it? There’s a definite “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” vibe to all the computer-connected sickos angle. But as manipulative and less-thancredible as this “Luther” might be, it is obvious that John Luther has always been, perhaps along with Stringer Bell of “The Wire,” Londoner Elba’s best role, and it’s nice to know that we can expect more “Luther” films down the road. Wotcha?
(“Luther: The Fallen Sun” contains extreme violence, profanity and sexually-suggestive content)