That Idris Elba has both the charisma and acting chops to be a huge movie star is a proposition that I presume that few of you would argue with. However, while he clearly has what it takes to shine on the big screen, he has yet to find a movie role that would give him what he needs to properly shine—his filmography is chock-full of terrible misfires (No Good Deed, Star Trek: Beyond, The Dark Tower and, of course, Cats immediately leap to mind) and even in the ones that have worked, he too often comes across like a bystander (I dug Beast, for example, but bringing him to do little more than tussle with a CGI lion seems like a waste of resources) and in the rare cases where he and the material have properly connected (most recently in the gorgeous Three Thousand Years of Longing), hardly anyone turned up to see them. Therefore, it is perhaps not surprising that for his latest film, he would return to the character that helped launch him in the first place, John Luther, the driven British police detective that he portrayed on television for five seasons between 2010-019. What is surprising is that the result, Luther: The Fallen Sun, is pretty much a dud, a listless and occasionally ugly thriller that requires its hero to undergo any number of nasty obstacles in order to save the day but never gives those of us in the audience to care about any of them.
As the film opens, a young man is lured away from his job one night by a mysterious phone call, only to be waylaid and abducted. On the case is Luther, who vows to the man’s distraught mother (Hattie Morahan) that he will find him for her. Observing this is David Robey (Andy Serkis) who, we quickly learn, is the actual kidnapper and while he may look like a nobody at first glance, it is clear that he is connected somehow because with just a single phone call, he is able to dig up enough proof about Luther’s occasionally quasi-legal investigative methods to have him put on trial and sent to prison. When the young man is finally discovered (it didn’t end well for him), the mother visits Luther in jail to berate him for breaking his promise (though to be fair, he was a tad occupied) and Robey manages to send him a recording of the victim’s final moments in order to taunt him.
As it turns out, Robey is a true monster—a serial killer who enjoys conceiving and executing audacious moments of public slaughter that he pulls off with the aid of people who he blackmails into serving his needs by trolling the Internet (with the aid of what appears to be a full-time tech staff) to find shameful material that he can use against them. “How shameful?,” you might ask. So shameful that his targets will do anything from hiding bodies to hurling themselves en masse from the roofs overlooking Piccadilly Circus to keep him from exposing their secrets. Figuring that Robey is building up to something truly cataclysmic and unable to convince his former colleagues that he is anything but a disgraced cop, Luther calls in a few favors of his own and arranges for his own prison escape so that he can pursue him, while trying to avoid the clutches of Odette Raine (Cynthia Erivo), who is the new police chief and who wants him back in custody pronto.
In all the obvious stylistic ways, Luther: The Fallen Sun is bigger than its television predecessor—it clearly cost more to make, the action scenes are more elaborate and at over two hours, it clocks in at more than twice the length of a typical series episode. From a creative standpoint, however, it is shockingly puny in scope. Even though the film was written by Neil Cross, who was the creator of the original series, it feels less like a Luther narrative and more like a particularly ham-handed serial killer narrative of the sort that flooded multiplexes in the wake of the success of Seven, only to be dusted off and have the original main character’s name changed to John Luther. Instead of telling a compelling story or allowing us to get a better sense of who Luther is, he simply hurtles from one violent setpiece to the next while essentially ignoring the stuff that might have given it more dramatic juice—Luther’s arrest, trial and conviction are over in the blink of an eye and there is no sense that he has reflected at all on the behaviors that helped land him in this particular predicament. Worst of all, when the full vision of what Robey is building towards is finally revealed, most viewers—at least those with a long memory regarding clumsy serial killer movies—may find themselves not so much stunned at the depths of his depravity as they are bemused by his evident fondness for one of Diane Lane’s less notable cinematic endeavors.
As the film lurches on, it gives ample proof that Elba—not to mention his stunt doubles—at least has the stamina to take on the much-rumored role of James Bond if he so desired (although there is one joke here that suggests that ship has permanently sailed). However, when it comes to giving him anything else to do that might show off his other talents, it comes up woefully short. This time around, Luther exists as little more than as a pawn of the machinations of a screenplay that seems determined to be as formulaic as can be. While the fact that he still remains a fairly compelling screen presence despite getting zero assistance from the script is notable, not even he can quite make it into something viable. As the villain of the piece, Serkis is just the usual collection of serial killer cliches and there is never any point where we get to understand anything about his character that might make him into anything other than the absurdly omnipotent monster he plays here. Also wasted is Erivo, an undeniably wonderful actress who is stuck in the kind of thankless role that makes absolutely no use of her gifts.
Had Luther: The Fallen Sun been reduced to one hour (and it easily could have) and presented as an episode of the show, it still probably wouldn’t have come close to matching the best installments of the series but it wouldn’t have come across that badly. Here, it is nothing more than a bloated disappointment that squanders practically all of the things that made the show work in the first place into a big screen hiccup that does roughly for its predecessor that The Nude Bomb did for Get Smart—virtually nothing. The only tangible feeling that it inspires is that of utter boredom, both on the parts of those responsible for making it and those watching it. I still remain convinced that Idris Elba will finally become the huge movie star that he clearly deserves to be. I am also convinced that when that time finally comes, Luther: The Fallen Sun will, if he is lucky, have been long forgotten.