Ahead of its arrival on Netflix next month, Luther fans will no doubt be thrilled to get an early big-screen look at this feature-length addition to the five-season-long crime thriller series. Stephen A Russell is pleased to report The Fallen Sun joins the ranks of solid small-to-big-screen evolutions like Fire Walk With Me.
Luther: The Fallen Sun
When a beloved TV show comes to an end, it can be hard to say goodbye, especially when they wisely went out on a high instead of overstaying their welcome, which is why it’s such a tantalising prospect when a shuttered series suddenly reappears on the big screen.
So it was when Netflix announced they’d reanimate BBC crime drama Luther. Led by Idris Elba, possibly the world’s longest-running rumoured new James Bond star, he once more dons his rumpled but dapper woolen trench, pale grey shirt and blood-red tie combo as grizzled police detective DCI John Luther in Luther: The Fallen Sun. Written by the show’s creator Neil Cross and directed by Jamie Payne (The Alienist), we return to London’s serial killer-littered streets four years after the show’s fifth and supposedly final season.
Always an imposingly charismatic presence, Elba excels as Luther, a man cut from the same cloth as Raymond Chandler’s rumpled detective Phillip Marlowe. Essentially a good guy out to save as many folks as he can, sadly the nature of the beasts he faces regularly requires him to cross the line ethically, unafraid of fisticuffs or even a spot of torture to get the information he needs at all costs.
And he’s facing a particularly dire nemesis here in the sneering shape of Andy “my precioussssss” Serkis’ cockney villain David Robey, a heinous ghoul who preys on the secret shame of ordinary folks, blackmailing them with revenge porn-style cyber-attacks then monetising their trauma in a pay-per-view hellscape hiding in the murkiest corners of the darkweb. His horrifying scheme also deploys the long-dead bodies of cold cases who inexplicably pop up years after they vanished, all the better to torment the loved ones of the newly missing who might be next. And he has Luther’s dodgiest dealings in his sights too.
It’s a gripping set-up, but does Luther make the leap to the silver screen successfully? There’s always a danger in going back to a good thing once it’s done. While we’ve seen the line between mediums blur ever closer, it can be challenging for TV shows to scale up to what makes a movie work. For every success story like David Lynch’s haunting Twin Peaks prologue Fire Walk With Me or the eventual reunion with the residents of Deadwood, there are pointless addendums like The Sopranos prequel The Many Saints of Newark or Breaking Bad’s epilogue El Camino.
Thankfully The Fallen Sun falls into the former category and is well worth catching. It helps that the show, like many British dramas, was already compact, with each season running two-to-four one-hour episodes, close enough to a film’s runtime. You don’t even need to be a diehard fan of Luther’s brutal but effective ways. While there are rewarding nods to the detective’s previous cases for the initiated, half the joy of detective shows is that each new investigation centred on a nefarious villain’s sick-making schemes is essentially standalone. It helps that the BBC show was always cinematic in the way it depicted a perma-rain-slicked London and the maniacal monsters who prey on her unsuspecting denizens with a flair for the horror movie theatrical, as exemplified by Ruth Wilson’s wildly unpredictable Luther frenemy Alice Morgan, who sadly doesn’t show up here despite her propensity for escaping seeming death.
Cross and Payne deliver a cracker here that feels very in tune with the series while also offering a fresh perspective. The Fallen Sun takes what we know about Luther and turns it against him. Let’s just say that when the world spectacularly discovers what he’s done to keep it safe, it doesn’t pan out so well for him. He soon finds himself pursued by his replacement, Odette Raine, impressively drawn by Bad Times at the El Royale star Cynthia Erivo. Dermot Crowley’s world-weary Martin Schenk is back, and while he’s fallen from favour in the walks of Luther’s disgrace, he’s a canny enough old dog to play both sides of the Raine/Luther divide to get them both where they need to be.
While the film nimbly stays just the right side of the show’s grounded approach, Payne and Cross go big with the cinematic flourishes when the story calls for it, including a nail-biting prison break sequence and an epic attack centred on a neon-lit Piccadilly Circus. All the while, Serkis eats up the scenery with a maniacal glee that wouldn’t feel out of place in the Bond franchise, including a final act secret lair showdown.
Even if you haven’t indulged in all five seasons of Luther—and trust us, there’s good reason to binge them all—you can dive in here and witness the magnificent Elba at the top of his game in a role that’s tailor-made for him.
