It took four years for the fifth season of ‘Luther’ to see the light -in 2019-, a headline police series, started in 2010, which has taken the same amount of time to continue the tribulations of its protagonist, played with charisma by Idris Elba. The experiences of the champion of the good of walking around the house created by the novelist Neil Cross have returned a few days ago, almost five years after his last hunt, with the help of a film lasting more than two hours, confirming the creative decline of a proposal that broke the rules of the serialized format and worked better with characters that no longer exist. The fourth session, for example, consisted of only two chapters, a fact that is similar, in terms of minutes, to their last feat: this time they have put together a couple of episodes and it has been released directly on Netflix as a feature film that It supposedly closes the outrages of the intense investigator. The film is number 1 on the popular platform, despite having dissatisfied the bulk of the fans of the ethically imperfect detective, which may lead to another soon-to-be-released adventure according to rumors. Given the success, there will surely be a sequel.
At the end of the fifth season, Luther entered the police station for corruption crimes. His eagerness to deliver justice ended up surpassing him. Committing impure acts in order to achieve your goal, no matter how fair it may seem, can end badly, with collateral damage. Let’s remember that there were two plots in parallel: a serial killer who got extremely excited by pricking others and the tough policeman doing his thing, stuck to the bars in an eye for an eye, kill or be killed. Once again, the protagonist’s morality was questioned: “If it is legal, there is no problem.” But it’s not always like this.
‘Luther: Night Falls’, the release that concerns us, presents the role embodied in body and soul by Elba locked behind bars. In short, extremely finished. The appearance of a new serial killer gets him up and running. You have a pending issue to resolve. The demons burn him inside and that inner storm must come out, so it doesn’t take long for him to hatch a plan that allows him to escape from prison and pursue the villain, played by Andy “Gollum” Serkis, a sadistic individual with a lot of dough. in his pocket, then remarkably bored, who wants to wreak havoc by manipulating unsuspecting human beings he’s caught doing something indecent on the Internet. He manages a network for the illegal capture of impudent images with which he can blackmail and manipulate half the planet.
Luther still has no weapons, he’s fine with his fists. He finds it hard to laugh, he is incapable, and he walks through the streets, in the shadows, with his hands in the pockets of a coat that he barely closes. He’s wearing a shirt underneath, which he doesn’t take away so that in ‘Luther: Night Falls’ he ends up in a snowy landscape in Norway, nothing more and nothing less, without getting cold, in case it was still clear to us that he is a tough guy . Some have seen echoes of James Bond in the third act of this failed film that starts off strong, exposing the horror of the superstar murderer, whose methodology is twisted and messianic, to deflate hopelessly, like the series itself. Let’s remember that Elba has been sounding like the first inclusive secret agent 007 for a long time. To the person who writes this, an avid reader of comics, the character has always reminded him of Blacksad, a tough black cat turned detective who walks the stick, clad in a traditional raincoat, through the streets of a city populated by all kinds of humanized animals. Juan Díaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido sign the cartoons, although Cross himself has confessed in more than one interview that he was inspired by Holmes and Colombo when writing.
good and evil
Jamie Payne, seasoned in the television field with series like ‘The Alienist’ or ‘Doctor Who’, transfers a script by Cross to a real image, whose career in the audiovisual medium is discreet, with the exception of ‘Luther’, with titles like ‘ Crossbones’ or ‘Hard Sun’. Elba reprises the role of investigator John Luther, a relentless defender of justice who has no problem bending the rules when it suits him to catch the wrongdoer he touches, be it a serial killer or a rogue mobster. He is a sack of testosterone, with no limits to his work, who barely sleeps, never eats and doesn’t carry a gun. He is always dressed in the same coat. With his hands in his pockets, he gracefully walks the streets of London, eaten up with anxiety. He is like a superhero if supernatural powers. Or rather a total antihero.
One of the characteristics of this series, and of many productions with British nationality (well above the American average), is that they offer few chapters, the story is aired without stretching the gum, something that has not happened in the premiere film . In ‘Luther: Night Falls’ there are hardly any moments of deep amorality, on the edge of the law, that question the ethics of Luther, an extremely interesting character, who often reveals himself to be a much more dangerous type than the thugs whom who fervently wants to hunt.
The Serie
‘Luther’ began its broadcast in May 2010, on the BBC grid, with an intense first season of six chapters that described his disturbing attraction to an insatiable psychopath who ends up being an unpredictable ally in his investigations. Both expel their monsters in a suspiciously similar way, even though the policeman is supposedly protected by the law. Ruth Wilson (‘The Affair’) plays Alice Morgan, the cold, Machiavellian and extremely intelligent assassin, a criminal mastermind who turns on the obsessive agent, to the point that they exchange some inner demons. Such a suggestive relationship gives rise to the psychological drama, one of the main assets of the series, whose second season had four installments, scheduled in the summer of 2011.
In 2012 Neil Cross himself, prone to exploring the darkness of the human being, published a novel, ‘Luther: The Origin’, where he recounts a kind of prequel to his creation. Edited by Es Pop Ediciones in our market, it presents an unpublished story that works independently, both for scholars and laymen. Winner of the 2012 Ngaio Marsh award for best detective novel of the year, its reading is mandatory for completist fans. Idris Elba won a Golden Globe for his performance that same year and there are several awards and nominations (Emmy, BAFTA, Satellite Awards…) that support this recommendable audiovisual fiction. “The mystery that Luther tries to solve is the death of his own soul in an imperfect world,” says filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, a follower of the inspector’s adventures. “Disgraced but willing to fight for salvation, Luther’s most formidable enemy is himself.” The protagonist’s ability to solve cases in an extraordinary way is inversely proportional to how he deals with personal and professional relationships. However, he knows how to trick his co-workers, he is a born manipulator. His deductive skills cloud his subordinates. Intuitive and instinctive, is he a good cop?
The secondary characters are also worth mentioning. Be careful not to fall in love with them because none of them is free from ending up with their throats cut, or worse. The third season, made up of four episodes, was broadcast on the BBC in the summer of 2013. The fourth, the weakest of all, came two years later, also in summer. From January 1, 2019 to January 4, 2019, the fifth installment could be seen, available on Netflix with the entire batch. It starts off strong, with Luther being tortured by George Cornelius, a curious mafia boss masterfully played by Patrick Malahide (‘Game of Thrones’). The gangster wants to know who has kidnapped his son. The one that gets involved is tremendous, with a disturbing ending, the hardest of the entire series. John Luther crosses every imaginable barrier this time, he runs wild on the edge of the abyss. While he tries to solve what has no solution, a new psychopath bursts onto the scene committing one crime after another. He is an unstoppable mental patient, whose greatest ally is his own psychologist, who is charismatically embodied by Hermione Norris (‘Cold Feet’). The cast is one of the greatest luxuries of the series, which limps with ‘Luther: Night Falls’, a compendium of forced turns that lengthens a hackneyed story that has enjoyed a budget above the rest of Luther’s outrages. The hand of Netflix is noticeable, and not for the better, trying to turn, once again, an interesting production into a mainstream delirium, without head or tail, that places the stubborn investigator in a place that does not belong to him.
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