Respond to these rapid questions in our Luther The Fallen Sun quiz and we will tell you which Luther The Fallen Sun character you are. Play it now.
Idris Elba does not require James Bond. He possesses John Luther.
With “Luther: The Fallen Sun,” a feature-length continuation of the BBC crime drama (in theaters this week, then streaming on Netflix March 10), the suave British actor instead slips back into a role he’s inhabited on television for nearly a decade, redirecting the online furor of his fan-casting to a similarly preposterous role that’s already, iconically, his own.
Elba has created an enduring hero in Detective Chief Inspector John Luther, a renegade policeman investigating London’s most heinous homicides, whose signature shades of gray—from his long wool overcoat to his moral compass—feel both classical and tailored to suit. Luther was styled after both Columbo and Sherlock Holmes, squinting and shambling through horrific crime scenes with his hands in his pockets, but it’s Elba’s mercurial screen personality, all rumpled gravitas and movie-star smolder, that fills out the character with something unique.
Luther is a larger-than-life protagonist, a brilliant and troubled, rough and ready, on the verge of darkness, the type of highly brooding detective willing to break any rule if it means catching a killer, whose uncompromising sense of justice places him at odds with colleagues. (None of them can claim to keep as cool a head whilst dangling a suspected witness over a balcony to extract key information.) Elba’s portrayal of Luther’s psychological torment—he breaks the law in order to uphold it—is soulful; he’s the kind of endlessly compelling screen presence who can burrow into an archetype and illuminate inner currents of passion, rage, and pain without making the obvious choice, without even appearing to lower the character’s ever-present guard. All five “Luther” series to date have featured the performer at his finest, and one of the most enjoyable aspects of “The Fallen Sun” is the ease and staggering charisma with which he shrugs that signature coat over his impossibly broad shoulders and returns to work.
But you shouldn’t waste any more time and start this Luther The Fallen Sun quiz.
Luther finds himself in jail at the start of “The Fallen Sun,” despite the fact that he was last seen cuffed by his former police superintendent, Martin Schenk (Dermot Crowley), after crossing one too many extralegal lines in the show’s fifth series finale. The good detective’s investigation into the disappearance of a young janitor has led his latest adversary—a teeth-gnashing ghoul of a tech billionaire played by Andy Serkis—to leak a dossier to the media that incriminates Luther in a litany of rule-bending offenses, ranging from breaking and entering to suspect intimidation, tampering with evidence, and bribery. (Of course, Luther is guilty on all counts, but he has a completely reasonable explanation that the courts should hear.)
Though imprisoned, Luther remains on Serkis’ mind, as does the aforementioned ghoul, David Robey, who terrorizes London with a series of elaborate killings—such as that of eight strangers abducted, hanged, and arranged in a manor that erupts into flames as the victims’ parents arrive—but still finds time to taunt Luther about his failure to stop the carnage. In reaction, Luther erupts during a prison transport after a kerosene-soaked cellblock riot forces his transfer to another facility. The sight of Luther brawling down a hallway of bloodthirsty inmates while shielded by a flaming mattress marks “The Fallen Sun” early on as an escalation of the series’ penchant for pulp theatrics.
Luther The Fallen Sun Quiz
Back on the rain-soaked streets of London, Luther searches for clues to Robey’s next atrocity exhibition, while being pursued by former police colleagues, including replacement DCI Odette Raine (Cynthia Erivo) and Schenk, who consults for the department as the authority on all things Luther. This isn’t a new setup for “Luther,” which had Elba’s hero on the run from the cops by the conclusion of the first season. Though “The Fallen Sun” is consciously framed as a cinematic reintroduction for the character, understanding the detective’s sordid history with seductive psychopath and potential soulmate Alice Morgan (Ruth Wilson), as well as the assorted supporting players who’ve paid the price for allying themselves with Luther, will be of value to viewers curious as to the air of haunted melancholy that pervades the film. He’s made bad decisions in the past, and he’s had to deal with the consequences.
Also, you will find out which character are you in this Luther The Fallen Sun quiz.
Luther fits perfectly in with the film’s gloomy, gothic London, where every darkened alleyway and unguarded suburbia setting is stalked by members of a rogues’ gallery twisted enough to make Batman blink. Evil occultists kidnap young mothers to drain their blood, masked fetishists wait under victims’ beds only to quietly snake out into view once the lights are turned off, and even clown-masked killers attack women walking home alone at night. The adversaries Luther encounters are super-criminals and terror agents who are transforming his city into a Gotham-esque urban sprawl of fear and depravity while justifying his own vigilantism.
Serkis is best known for his motion-captured performances that highlight the humanity of sophisticated animals, but he is equally compelling as a sadistic wolf in sheep’s garb, an omniscient one-percenter whose reach will never surpass his grasp. Robey is a ludicrous megalomaniac even before it’s revealed he keeps a Norwegian lair fit for a Bond villain—one none-too-subtle touch that, in keeping with the film’s impressive budget, elevates Luther out of his already-heightened pulp surroundings and into a more winkingly silly action sandbox. When faced with a cartoonishly cruel archvillain like this, Luther’s eventual admission to a reproachful former colleague that he broke the law because he “couldn’t see any other way to do what had to be done” registers as a hero’s mantra rather than a confession of past crimes.
About the quiz
Returning director Jamie Payne (who also directed Series 5) extends the stark and amplified atmosphere of his previous “Luther” installments, even as the action set pieces—one transforming Piccadilly Square into a warzone, another leaving London to explore a frozen house of horrors—scale up, with veteran cinematographer Larry Smith bathing the film’s eeriest tableaux of domestic terror in a cold, suffusing twilight. Luther’s signature red tie, as seen in earlier episodes, is sometimes the brightest splash of color on the screen. Neil Cross, the series’ creator and sole writer, scripts “Luther” with a menacing and lurid sensibility that approaches the gritty camp of recent DC superhero films, a sensation heightened by Lorne Balfe’s taut, pulsing music.
Also, you must try to play this Luther The Fallen Sun quiz.
For all of the film’s gloomy atmosphere and hard-boiled dialogue, the unerring instincts of its actors, some of whom are returning to parts they’ve played for a decade, are essential to its pleasures. When Idris Elba co-stars with Dermot Crowley as former superintendent Martin Schenk, both performers bounce self-important cornball dialogue around with the steady rhythm and good humor of seasoned scene partners. They’re working experts with a difficult task ahead of them. Erivo, too, fits into the equation as a detective initially tasked with tracking down Luther, providing the matter-of-fact gravitas required to go toe-to-toe with the hero, even if the requisite third-act twist that partners them up is a little too far-fetched, even by the film’s graphic-novel logic.
The fact that “The Fallen Sun” ends up feeling more episodic than climactic is on purpose; Elba has made no secret of his desire to portray Luther in a series of films, of which this is only the first. “The Fallen Sun,” which will be available on Netflix alongside the rest of the TV series, is a natural continuation for fans but also a way in for series newcomers, even sending the character off in a new direction that playfully acknowledges Elba’s Bond bona fides while asserting, not unconvincingly, that Luther’s world is quite enough.
“Luther: The Fallen Sun” opens in limited theaters this Friday and will be available on Netflix on March 10.
For more personality quizzes check this: Breeding Difficulty Quiz.
