Let the public reassure themselves, Luther: Desolate Sun will not explore the life of the famous German theologian, father of Protestantism. It is a further joint grafted at the end of the series created by Neil Cross, an outgrowth of more than two hours available from March 10 on Netflix. What does this new serial killer movie offer us?
Film or show? You have to choose!
The big-gauge gap by extending a series of a feature film, it is of course to invite as much the audience fan of the basic material as the one who, at the option of scroll wanders, will fall on the film without knowing anything about the series. Luther: Desolate Sun Could have offered us a brief characterization of the characters, to retrievate the context and the different narrative frames, but the director Jamie Payne (primarily known for his creations for television) came out by a pirouette: to launch his film like a Go fast at a Marseille toll.
And it has to be seen that it works, at least in part. It is certain that the spectator totally foreign to the initial creation of Neil Cross will partially miss the issues surrounding the characters. He will not necessarily understand the motivations of the killer, a proto-twin-malefic Benjamin Biolay (Andy Serkis, alias Gollum) dreaming in Julien Lepers of hell. He will hardly grasp the reasons for sending the investigator Luther (Idris Elba) under locks, from the beginning of the feature film, if it is not that he would have crossed too often the grey line between conscientious cop and police establishing his own justice. Yet the film takes you by the collar and forces you to move forward... A process that he will use several times throughout history.
Inconsistency when you hold us
In fact, Luther, despite passing through the prison box, will not stop his investigation, however, thanks to a telephone which he will magically manage to introduce into the high-security prison. Why? How? No time for these questions, the feature film is already five scenes further...
A process that the film will repeat every time the needs of the script are shattered against the walls of logic: « Unexplained inconsistency ». Payne, who knows where her script is going but not how to bring it, will not be able to work her writing but will introduce to it the forceps of perfectly inexplicable and unexplained elements. Miraculous phones running underwater, arrival of rescue or antagonists, setting up scenes of « torture »Payne abuses this magic wand. And if he thinks he can get us to swallow them loosely, he thinks we're a little bit like pigeons. But let's go over these multiple inconsistencies to plunge ourselves into what makes the essence of this Luther: Desolate Sun.
Find for the losers
Payne, like some new filmmakers, will use his references as crutches. It is felt throughout the prison part that in the spirit of the director the (genial) series Oz (and a whole series of prison productions) has long infused: construction of these cacophonies mixing cries and metal noises, the congestion of narrow corridors between passages and cold concrete, wildlife of skinheads Aches of beatings, austere buildings... One feels the resuccess and each plan seems to have already been shot earlier (and better ?). But as soon as he leaves prison, the film looks much more on the side of another monument: a certain David Fincher.
Film in puzzle, peasy photograph with dominant green, glaucous atmosphere to wish, no doubt, it is on the side of the father of Se7en and Zodiac That Jamie Payne's in there. Unfortunately, if he tries to emulate the Fincher system in his cinema, he never manages to emancipate it: we are no longer dealing with an attempted copyist low-coast than an inspired cinema with the touch of a personal leg. And we're gonna try to figure out why...
Film broke?
The budget Luther: Desolate Sun It was not revealed on the canvas, but no doubt it is not very high (and that it spun largely in the casting). The special effects sometimes make the retina bleed – even with a small screen view – especially the green bottoms that see themselves ten kilometers away or almost all scenes involving fire. But where the bat really hurts, it's about choreography of fights.
The typical example is the emerging mingle in the corridors of the prison, where Luther is targeted by other prisoners while the guards try both well and badly to bring order to rule there. Payne chooses to shoot it in relatively long planes, if one takes as a standard the average duration of a current action cinema sequence. A good thing is this, but it leaves the spectator here all the time to detail the discomfort of the actors simulating their blows, in an orchestration of the terribly flat bodies.
Although it is symptomatic of one of the problems of the film, it still has to be recognized that it lasts only a few minutes and that much of the stunts – car racing, violent deaths, prosecution – work much better than this sequence. But if it's not just the money missing LutherWhat's wrong?
Substituted Tied
If we compare it to Fincher, Luther: Desolate Sun is very pale despite his casting that holds the house and a lot of scenes that manage to work. And the reason for that, in large part, is how much Payne makes it a lukewarm substitute. The black coffee Fincher becomes here a poorly dosed chicory, where the director (or the production?) does not dare much...
Violence, in particular, remains well-cleaned and relegated off-site. A collective suicide scene is the paragon. The camera will not show anything bad, will spare the viewer the image and the sound of these deaths in series. Only a watered-down glimpse that will not be able to mark memories will remain. The same thing repeats itself during the final, turning strange snuff movie live. The promises are there (mutitudes of torture tools, Slavic executioners, kerosene ready to burn everyone), Payne will make only one copied-paste caressed from the end of the Skyfall.
Soft fit
Combined with the almost non-existent characterization of the characters described above, these tares flowed a film that began well. This start is unfortunately not enough to keep us to the very end: a long belly-moulded whole central segment of a production much too stretched (2h10) for what it has to tell.
Still a nice Sunday night film, where we won't have too many scruples to skip some resolutely long passages. Prosecutions in London streets and the presence of a solid casting will suffice to satisfy the majority of spectators, make them swallow their warm lasagna and make them forget that tomorrow is Monday.
To be discovered from 10 March 2023 on Netflix.
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