Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Luther: The Fallen Sun’ on Netflix, in Which the Hit BBC Series Becomes a Retread of Serial Killer Thrillers

Acclaimed Idris Elba-fronted BBC series Luther treks on with feature film Luther: The Fallen Sun (now on Netflix), a standalone saga that more closely resembles an old-school serial-killer thriller than a prestige-TV show that racked up a sizable heap of award nominations since its 2010 debut. I mean, it’s set in a version of London that makes Gotham City look like Smurf Village. Its plot strains credibility like spanx on a sperm whale. And its antagonist, played by Andy Serkis with absurdly maniacal helmet hair, makes the Jigsaw Killer from Saw look like Winnie the Pooh. However, it does give us scads and scads of brooding Elba, countered by a smart performance from Cynthia Erivo (Harriet), which may just make it worth 130 minutes of your life.  

LUTHER: THE FALLEN SUN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The night: dark and stormy. The victim: A poor teenage gent, lured out by a man on the phone threatening to expose his secrets. The evil deed: Our gent stops at what appears to be an accident and the man on the phone, notably no longer on the phone, attacks and kidnaps him. The bad guy: David Robey (Serkis), a man with more money than sanity by a vast margin; he gets his kicks by blackmailing his victims with proof of all the no-nos they’ve indulged on the internet, then tortures and murders them. On the case: Luther (Elba), who’s somehow still employed despite being a police cop badge detective who colors way outside the lines. You know the type – your mother warned you about these guys, tall and dark and brooding and smoldering, and they’ve seen and done some shit and are almost certainly dynamite in the sack. ONE MILLION HEART EMOJIS.

Luther arrives on the scene and promises the victim’s anxious mother that he’ll find the kid, a promise that goes poof right quick via two developments: One, the kid’s body is found hanged in a mansion with several other victims’ bodies, which are discovered by the victims’ families just in time for the whole scene to burst into flames. (Don’t you HATE it when that happens?) And two, Luther’s unlawful misdeeds land him in maximum-security prison, where he, as a now former police cop badge detective, exists with a massive target on his back. Meanwhile, detective Odette Raine (Erivo) assumes the lead on the serial killer investigation. Unlike every other series of incidents involving such murderous sleazebagganos in the movies or real life, nobody bothers to nickname the killer. May I suggest the Catfisher? The World Wide Web Wacko? Maybe the Net Nut? So many possibilities.

Of course, Luther just has to get this guy, so he stages a prison riot that covers his escape from the pokey – although it’s not that easy, because he has to push and shove and punch and kick and headbutt his way out of a building full of guys who want to boil his bones in a broth, but he succeeds with hardly a scratch. (Don’t worry, by the time the movie ends, Luther will have sustained enough bruises, stab wounds, battered ribs and internal and external bleeding to give him a slight limp.) He pulls a sheet off his rapidly aging Volvo and gets to work in this rapidly aging plot, which surely fears the atrophy of a sedentary existence and therefore barrels full speed ahead, so you better hang on. It involves navigating backalley sex dungeons and abandoned subway tunnels and remote mansions by the Arctic Circle in Norway – note to Luther, zip up your damn coat, it’s cold up there – all while playing meow-and-squeak with detective Raine, who remains a half-step behind Robey and his f—ing hair, which is frustrating, his hair and the situation, because does the guy employ a personal stylist to get it like that or what, and because Luther is only a quarter-step behind him. Will the villain make this personal? Will our protags catch him? Will we ever see Luther walk into a store and buy at least one among his apparently endless supply of burner phones? NO SPOILERS.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Seven, The Batman, The Bone Collector, The Little Things, Saw, Saw II, Saw III, Saw V, Saw VI, The Snowman, Pooh’s Heffalump Halloween Movie, etc.

Performance Worth Watching: Erivo and Elba get one very brief scene in which the unstoppable tank-division plot pauses for a beat or two and allows them to reveal tiny scraps of vulnerable character stuff. And after all this, these two very talented actors deserve to star in a My Dinner With Andre-type drama in which they play a cozy married couple who just sit in a sitting room sipping tea and talking about their favorite books.

Memorable Dialogue: Two cop characters, Archie (Thomas Coombes) and Luther’s old boss and loyal pal Martin (Dermot Crowley, reprising his role from the series), characterize our titular antihero:

Archie: Your friend’s giving me conniptions.

Martin: Yes. He’ll do that.

Sex and Skin: Nah. All this grimness kills the mood.

Our Take: I don’t know what’s worse, that a movie introduces the increasingly wearisome idea of online-surveillance paranoia, or just uses it as a catalyst for a ridiculous series of ramped-up contrivances – diabolical schemes with nasty booby traps and countdown tickers – that constitute this plot. That woefully underdeveloped conceptual fodder merges with every cliche from the 1990s serial-killer film library to create a snappily paced, dragged-out, visually rich, thematically tedious, reasonably entertaining, annoyingly far-fetched chase-’em-down movie. I dunno, color me conflicted.

At least The Fallen Sun – complete nonsense title, by the way – looks good, with crisp editing, gloomy and artful cinematography and skillfully conceived and executed action set pieces (the prison break sequence stands out). But it rarely pauses to breathe and allow heavy-hitters Erivo and Elba time to play a character who isn’t reduced to a simplistic motivation and a means for exposition; it moves so rapidly through its plot points, we barely have a moment to consider that Luther is a superhuman creature who works night and day and never needs sleep and can maintain his wits despite enduring ungodly amounts of pain – as you do when human lives are at stake. Serkis, meanwhile, goes full glazed-ham, since significant effort must be exerted in order to not be upstaged by that hairpiece.

I dunno, without the series’ episodic structure, this Luther feels trapped in its feature-length structure, leaving little room for character development, contextual implications and subtext. It isn’t about much of anything, not moral ambiguity, the corruptibility of modern tech or even the origins of sociopathy. It’s a lousy procedural, in too much of a hurry to be detailed. It’s structured not as a suspenseful mystery but a haphazard chase lacking the type of twists and turns that might make it clever. And it’s unrelentingly grim and humorless. But hey, at least it’s handsome, right?

Our Call: Handsome same old stuff is still the same old stuff. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.