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Luther: The Fallen Sun poster

Luther: The Fallen Sun (2023)

A gruesome serial killer is terrorizing London while brilliant but disgraced detective John Luther sits behind bars. Haunted by his failure to capture the cyber psychopath who now taunts him, Luther decides to break out of prison to finish the job by any means necessary.
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3.5 / 5
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Incluvie Movie Reviews


Dana Ziyasheva
March 27, 2023
5 / 5
INCLUVIE SCORE
3.5 / 5
MOVIE SCORE

'Luther: The Fallen Sun', Idris Elba’s Netflix Vehicle, Fails to Make the Point

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGK5qtXuc1Q I approached Luther: The Fallen Sun (2023) not as a sequel to a BBC show that I haven’t seen, but as Idris Elba’s Netflix vehicle, and as such, it left me utterly underwhelmed. Full disclosure: I am an Idris Elba fan. He does the very British “less is more” acting method to perfection: in Prometheus (2012), his character has only a few lines and still manages to outshine the rest of the all-star ensemble. Elba is at his maximum star wattage when he exudes class (Obsessed, 2009) or kinetic energy (Beasts of No Nation, 2015). Alas, he is none of that in Luther: The Fallen Sun. Instead, we get a morose, mumbling Elba. As if, after playing the London police inspector for five seasons (2010-2019) on British television, he decided to phone this one in. Netflix’s John Luther is a push-over. We watch him being bossed around by a mother of a victim, inmates in jail, colleagues in the police, and David Robey (Andy Serkis), a hyperactive serial killer who desperately tries to elevate death-porn Zoom sessions into a cult. In their final confrontation, in a car sinking to the bottom of a frozen lake, Luther is more interested in wrestling away the remote control from Robey than finishing him off. Viewers flocked to Netflix to see Elba kick ass in style, like the first black James Bond would. The 65 million hours of the movie viewed worldwide put the show at #1 on the streamer’s Top 10 ("Variety"). But what slow-footed, slow-witted Luther really achieved, is to effectively bury the dream of Elba ever donning the famous tux and introducing himself to a Belarussian honeytrap as “Bond, James Bond.” The plot is confusing, and cliches keep piling up, eventually reaching the level of absurdity unexpected from an Idris-Elba-caliber production. Luther gets thrown into a prison that is populated almost exclusively by white bigots who hate Luther’s guts. Because he is a cop. They knock him unconscious in a shower. Later, during a prison revolt, they are hell-bent on breaking into Luther’s cell and killing him. Why didn’t they do it in the shower, or when they saw him in the canteen and prison yard?! Set design and editing don’t help. After the gratuitous nudity/jail shower scene, John Luther throws on an inconspicuous hoodie and goes to some urban dump to meet two pals under the rain. He asks them to break him out of jail. By the looks of it, he is already out, but according to Luther, he is still inside. At this point, I am too busy trying to decipher the motivations behind this production to care about Luther’s whereabouts. Neil Cross, the show’s creator, doesn’t seem to know what to make out of the Netflix sequel: a pulp-noir comedy in the vein of Dick Tracy
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Movie Information


A gruesome serial killer is terrorizing London while brilliant but disgraced detective John Luther sits behind bars. Haunted by his failure to capture the cyber psychopath who now taunts him, Luther decides to break out of prison to finish the job by any means necessary.

Rating:R
Genre:Crime, Mystery, Thriller
Directed By:Jamie Payne
Written By:Neil Cross
In Theaters:2/24/2023
Box Office:

Runtime:129 minutes
Studio:Chernin Entertainment, BBC Film, BBC Studios

Cast


Director

Jamie Payne

Director

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cast

Idris Elba

John Luther

cast

Cynthia Erivo

DCI Odette Raine

cast

Andy Serkis

David Robey

cast

Dermot Crowley

DSU Martin Schenk

cast

Thomas Coombes

DS Archie Woodward

cast

Hattie Morahan

Corinne Aldrich

cast

Lauryn Ajufo

Anya Raine

cast

Vincent Regan

Dennis McCabe

cast

Ross Waiton

Newman

cast

Dan Li

Wong

cast

Edward Hogg

Derek Standish