I must start by admitting that I never watched the Luther series. Although I’m very new to this universe, I don’t think this really made me get confused at any moment of the movie. I could clearly understand everything from it without having to watch the show, and I’m happy for that. Luther: The Fallen Sun is pretty solid but a fun time, but the movie misses the main point: it feels more like an action movie than a detective story.
The movie tells the story of Luther, who used to work as a detective in London, he’s known for solving previous big cases, but the one that he’s now dealing with is bigger than everything he have ever seen. A psychopath named David Robey (Andy Serkis) is making people kill theirselves by threatening them of sharing their secrets to everyone, and that for some people, dying is better than being heavily humbled. Luther, after being accused of corruption, is now in jail, incapable of solving this case, he decides to escape.
Action scenes are great, Andy Serkis is the MVP, he manages to scare us with his threatening way to speak and act, he’s really the perfect actor to play a villain. The movie have plenty dark tones. Photography feels forced, sometimes it feels like they’re doing some camera movements trying to make some “better” shots but it ends up not looking that good, the story goes very slow and that’s also something that bothered me, I think they could have worked better on the script because the performances itself were fine and exceptional.
Idris Elba does an exceptional job as Luther but the script doesn’t help his character that much, a weak character development is what we witness here. Talking about him again, yes, Andy Serkis is the best part of the movie for me, he’s a very dark and scary villain, he gives you the chills, you can see huge similarities between him and the Riddler from The Batman, the way they act and the way of “live streaming to their fans,” that’s something that made me assimilate those characters.
Cynthia Erivo also does an exceptional job as Odette Raine, she brings the feeling of a desperate mother willing to find her daughter, I never seen the actress before in any other project but I’d adore to see her again in other projects.
Luther: The Fallen Sun is thrilling but uninspired, an incredible perfomance of Andy Serkis and Idris Elba can’t save the weak script that made a detective movie become a generic action movie.
★★★½
The movie hits Netflix on March 10th
