From director Jamie Payne comes a crime thriller that puts John Luther (Idris Elba) back on the map. Brilliant but disgraced detective John Luther leaves prison to hunt down a sadistic serial killer who is terrorizing London. The Luther television series premiered in 2010 and ran until 2019.
Elba is most well-known for his role as Luther because the British crime series had a large following. The reason why the show did very well is because of Elba’s charm as a leading man. He has such a strong presence on screen and gave such a compelling performance as a detective in this series.
After the series ended, Elba was ready to depart from the character, but the idea of a movie was always on the table. Elba went on to make plenty of other films, but unfortunately, Hollywood had no idea what movie to put him in.
When it came to Luther: The Fallen Sun, it was almost like they needed to head back to the roots of the character, and that’s precisely what they did after he got out of prison.
Luther is such a strong character because he can get into the mindset of the suspect, which is always a brave thing to do. It showed a different side of the puzzle and how intimidating it can be to solve it. Any series (or movie, in this case) that dives into the mindset of killers is hard to watch, but it’s better to understand their thought process.
The whole purpose of shows/movies like Luther: The Fallen Sun is to have viewers understand psychologically that everyone’s trauma stems from somewhere. That trauma can manifest into anything; Luther is the one Detective to break that down. People have connected to this character for many reasons, and this film has come at a very good time in Elba’s career. He went back to a character that he enjoyed playing and was able to bring such important topics to the forefront.
He is such a strong leading man, but they don’t know how to use him for some reason. This time, he went back to the UK and found comfort there. The crew went to London, Brussels, and Iceland to film at three prominent locations.
Where was Luther: The Fallen Sun filmed – a breakdown of filming locations
London, England, UK
The heart of the show is in London, so there are some landmarks that you see throughout the film, like Picadilly Circus, Aldwych Tube Station, and Chinatown.
Brussels, Belgium
There is a studio called Lites where they filmed some of the water scenes in Brussels.
Iceland
There’s nothing like some beautiful snow landscapes to shoot in a film, and they went to Iceland for Luther to limp along in the snow.
They drove to Iceland from England?
Bad writing, just for an interesting location.
Lazy writing – why was Luther sent to prison? That never was explained clearly.
And in the end, Andy “coming out”? As what, GAY? He was certainly no Red Dragon, now that was coming out. And the new DNI or whatever, the black police woman, was so 2 dimensional. I found myself cheering on Andy Serkis’ character the longer it went on.
If writers could just not be lazy – there’s so much literature to draw from. It had some good ideas, but too much violence, blubbering, and suspect motivations. Predictable.
Grade: C-
Hi DoctorMoebius. Just want to clear up a few things for you.
They got a ferry to Norway. They never went to Iceland. Ever. They ‘filmed’ on location there. (You see in films they sometimes film in locations that are not actually named the same as the films. Gotham is actually Chicago in Nolan’s Batman’s for example). Anyway the location is mentioned in the film and they even have a shot of the ferry crossing the water.
Ok, again the reason Luther goes to prison is clearly and explicitly mentioned in the film. They even have news readers at the beginning talking about it. He went to prison for all his misdemeanours (serious criminal charges) in his past. They even list some of the charges; Breaking and Entering, suspect intimidation, bribery etc. It’s about 7 minutes into the film. David (Andy Serkis) get his inside man (we later learn is DS Archie Woodward) to leak a dossier to the press.
DNI? Do you mean DSI? Detective Superintendent. That is one of the most common acronyms in film and TV.
When does David, (I presume you mean the character played by Andy Serkis) come out gay? That is never mentioned. Where did you get that from? Please, enlighten me, where it states he is ‘coming out’. If you mean the scene where he talks about ‘people like us’ when torturing Luther, he is talking about their people hiding their psychotic tendencies.
Apologies if English ain’t your first language.
Rosenthal…they got a ferry to Norway? The port in England they left from was Dover, the only route from there is to Northern France. From there it’s at least a 20 hour drive to Norway. It’s terrible writing no matter how you try to dress it up
Hi Luke. Ok. I shoulda been more explicit to pander to any pedentary. So, you could get a ferry mainland Europe (France OR The Netherlands) and drive from there and get, guess what. Another ferry. It’s not that difficult to imagine that or really that incredulous. but it would take about 18 hours which is a friggin’ long time.