Movie Review: 24 Redemption (some spoilers)

The family is watching 24 Redemption for the second time as we speak so I felt it a good time to write.

24 was once my favorite show, the traitors and patriots, good versus evil, and the gut wrenching drama. By the end of the 6th season I was still waiting and expecting season 7 the next year. In the show's absence I spent some time dwelling on it and reading the books and felt for a while that it was done for. The character had just been through too many horrors and had too many bad days to buy into it anymore. Metal Gear understood that this was a bad thing when they wrote Solid Snake's story, instead of saving the world 20 or so times he had 3 to 5 major events in his lifetime, one of them which ended in arguably saving the world and disappearing off the face of the earth. I had begun to feel 24 had just hit a point where nothing could intensify anything more. In season 6 when the nuclear weapon went off in Los Angeles that was it. It was gut wrenching and it was powerful and it was well written, but at the same time I recognized that anything bigger would be absurd.

For a while I didn't have much faith in the ability of the show to redeem itself, I had it in my head that it would come back and start slipping. 24 Redemption comes in here.

I think this movie was handled well because they wrote a gut wrenching and powerful story without C.T.U., without most of the usual set pieces, and without the near destruction of the United States. It was also a smooth move because after making Jack Bauer disappear for a while and having most of the cast gone they could start fresh. They have a movie that can attract new viewers and lead directly into the events of the upcoming 24 Season 7.

After losing everything by the end of 6, Jack disappears for a while. He runs around 3 continents avoiding capture by the U.S. government and spends some time with an old buddy from his Special Forces days working at a school for children in “Sangala" (an almost anagram of either Senegal of Angola) in Africa. A war criminal starts another bloody African genocide and civil war and Jack travels with his friend to get these children out of the country. In the end to save these children he has to surrender himself to the U.S. government. A tragic and bone chilling scene occurs at the end as the last of the U.S. forces abandon the base and leave the masses below to face certain genocide, Rwanda all over again.

On the other side of the story the normal political trouble starts and new villians are born, the old president is finishing up with the transition work as a new president takes office, C.T.U. has been destroyed...

The movie is both a powerful story and a device to set up Season 7, it requires little background in 24. Season 7 though according to the previews, requires a little more background in 24... Not gonna spoil it but Season 7 for fans will either blow your mind or piss you off. The movie features a tired and slightly aged Kiefer Sutherland which translates into a tired and aged Jack Bauer, very appropriate for the life he has lead.

Anyway 24 Redemption reminded me that even though the franchise had so much happen on such an unreal time frame so many times, it still tells a gut wrenching story and sucks you in.

I got a kick out of the character they put in there, the U.N. guy who is of course a cold bastard and a coward unwilling to break neutrality even if it means preventing a genocide (and of course he is a crook and a traitor), a pretty strong characterization of the broader U.N. as a whole. No politics in that at all I'm sure, lol.

At any rate I never thought I'd be so excited about 24 again, sure it has its flaws but its still one-of-a-kind and powerfully told story.