‘LUTHER’ is a hit British procedural detective thriller series starring Idris Elba in the title role. It started in 2010 with 6 episodes and had four more seasons with 4 or 2 episodes. It ended in 2019 and now, four years later, they come up with a full length film, “Luther: the Fallen Sun”, still with Elba in the title role.

Luther is a dedicated DCI (Detective Chief Inspector) who can be obsessive with the cases he handles. The film starts with a young man being kidnapped by a vicious serial killer. But this is not a whodunit as the identity of the psychopathic killer is revealed early on.

The killer is a rich and obviously insane businessman, David Robey (Andy Serkis, Gollum in “Lord of the Rings” and “King Kong”), who then gathers evidence on the illegal acts Luther made before as a detective to disgrace him. He succeeds in shaming Luther and in quickly putting him behind bars, a plot ploy meant to make the movie just a bit more complicated.

Robey has many other kidnap victims and he is able to convince their parents to gather in a house which he then burns, along with the bodies of his victims. He then taunts Luther by sending him a recording of how he killed his latest young victim.

Luther becomes all the more fired up to apprehend Robey and he escapes from jail to personally hunt down the killer. The movie then becomes a cat and mouse game with Luther in hot pursuit of the very elusive killer.

At one point, Robey kidnaps Anya (Lauryn Ajufo), the teenage daughter of Odette Raine (Cynthia Erivo), the new head of the police department in charge of his case. Luther and Raine then team up and they go to Robey’s hideout abroad.

This is where Robey torments his kidnap victims and puts them on his show online, “The Red Bunker”, to be seen by his perverted followers.

At first, Robey gets the upperhand and even gets to force Luther and Raine to torture each other to save Anya.

But you know he won’t succeed in his evil deeds as he is not the one who plays the title role but Luther. Ho-hum…. The movie often resorts to gruesome brutality to shock the viewers. It has many over the top scenes to show it’s a movie, not just another TV series episode.

As the antagonist, Robey is such a powerful and cunning killer who even knows how to use modern cyber surveillance technology. He employs this to manipulate people to follow him, commit mass suicides, cause car crashes and kill even innocent civilians, the works.

If you’re a fan of Idris Elba, then you might like the movie and his role as the determined detective who plays by his own rules. No doubt his cool charisma is quite engaging. It’s said he is offered to be the next James Bond, but thank God, he wisely turned it down. He’s already 50 years old. We’d prefer an actor who is much younger, more agile and more virile.

This “Luther” movie spares no expense with its big action set pieces involving many extras, like Elba’s first encounter with Robey at the busy Picadilly Circus.

Andy Serkis’ exagerrated villainy is supposed to be scary in its cruel excesses, but his appearance alone with his fake hair, is so limp and unconvincing. Elba is much bigger so it’s not believable that he can subdue Elba that easily in their physical encounters.

They should have gotten someone more menacing to harass Elba, like Mads Mikkelsen. Also, there are a number of boring stretches that should have been edited to make the slow movie more fast paced.

The finale just goes off the rails with talk-talk-talk before Elba finally gets to punish his aggressor. It looks like that Director Jamie Payne doesn’t know how to wrap up his story in a more graceful and exciting way.