Idris Elba’s long-promised Luther movie is finally here

Almost every movie is better in a cinema, but the Luther sequel plays better in the intimacy of your own home.

Luther is finally back in the long-promised feature film. Picture: John Wilson/Netflix

How long have we been waiting for a Luther movie?

The earliest tease for a feature planned around Idris Elba’s ethically and legally compromised Detective, John Luther, date back to 2012. That flick, tentatively titled The Calling, was to have followed the third season of the crime show.

It never happened but then fans got unexpected fourth and fifth seasons of the show instead, so that seemed like a decent trade-off.

When the TV series signed off in January 2019, the idea of a silver screen adventure was back. Elba, by then a much bigger star than when he first donned that iconic tweed coat in 2010, was chuffed on the idea. He’s the one who was dropping the hints.

That promise has finally been fulfilled, a feature-length Luther chapter that is larger in scale than a regular episode but with the same darkness coursing through its veins.

Except now, that feature is less of a big screen proposition and is instead a streaming movie. There were limited sessions in cinemas in the past few weeks, but Luther has always been something you watched at home, perversely inviting that sense of dread and paranoia into your sanctuary.

Luther: The Fallen Sun is streaming now on Netflix. Picture: John Wilson/Netflix

So even though almost every movie is better experienced in a cinema (sorry, Netflix), this is a rare exception. There’s something in how Luther has so successfully burrowed into our subconscious for the past 13 years that the journey should be continued in intimate surrounds.

Directed by Jamie Payne, who helmed the season five episodes, and written by series creator Neil Cross, Luther: The Fallen Sun is a deft continuation of the beloved show. It has that same grit and menace that’s kept audiences off balance, and it dials up the violence.

And, of course, it has Elba’s blend of charisma and danger, where the line between righteousness and sin is dotted and blurred.

Elba and Cross inherently understand that it’s that duality in Luther which makes him so compelling, and Fallen Sun plays up on this idea that Luther’s effectiveness at catching the worst of the worst is that his own nature skirts a little too close to the predators he hunts. What keeps him from becoming them is that he still believes in the goodness of those he saves and avenges.

In Fallen Sun, that big bad is Robey (a snarling Andy Serkis), a resourceful serial killer who exploits and manipulates the hate within men to recruit them into his sickening schemes. He taunts Luther in prison, where the now former cop has been holed up since he was arrested at the end of the previous season.

Luther has been the defining role of Idris Elba’s career. Picture: John Wilson/Netflix

But Luther being Luther, orchestrates a breakout in a pulsating action set-piece that declares Fallen Sun’s insistence that this is more than just a regular episode.

Elba’s cerebral action hero cred is on full show and the extravagance of the sequence is matched later on in an elaborate and macabre scene set in Piccadilly Circus. The ambitions here are grander in scope so that it does feel like more of an “event”.

The cat-and-mouse-and-cat chase between Luther, Robey and Detective Odette Raine (Cynthia Erivo) is on, culminating in a thrilling conclusion that reminds fans that there is still life left in this 13-years-and-counting ongoing story.

In his career so far, Luther has been Elba’s defining role – he slips into the skin with such ease – and there is a persuasive argument that he doesn’t ever need to be James Bond because what he’s doing here is far more interesting than what that franchise could offer him.

Rating: 3.5/5

Luther: The Fallen Sun is streaming now on Netflix