24: Redemption Movie Recap

• Nov 23, 2008 10:01 PM ET
• by Todd Thatcher

If it feels like years since we last saw Jack Bauer, that's because it has been — one-and-a-half years, to be exact. But the series returns with a bang in the two-hour movie 24: Redemption which, after a sixth season that was universally regarded as the series' weakest, proves to be worth the wait.

We open in the fictional African nation of Sengala, where child warriors-in-training are learning to shoot sub-machine guns. The soldier who oversees them, Colonel Ike Dubaku (coolly fierce Hakeem Kae-Kazim), chillingly tells the boys, "Your parents have made you weak. We will make you strong." Even more disturbing is Dubaku's next lesson — teaching one the youths to behead a prisoner with a machete.

In sharp contrast, the next scene marks a rare appearance of Jack's tender side, when he allows a young boy named Willy to keep the scarf he's pilfered from Jack's room — but not the knife (that will come in handy later). We soon learn that the former CTU agent has been globetrotting to dodge a subpoena from Washington, where the Senate wants to grill Jack over the "enhanced" interrogation techniques he has frequently employed. He's also doing penance for his past sins, helping old special-forces buddy Carl Benton (the always-welcome Robert Carlyle) run a school.

But when gun-toting thugs emerge from the jungle, pressing some of the students into service and killing those who try to run, it's clear the old Jack will have to return soon enough. And return he does, in a Rambo-esque battle that finds him tossing Molotov cocktails, handling a multitude of firearms, and delivering a well-placed knife to the throat. You know, all the Jack Bauer classics.

Meanwhile in Washington, Sen. Allison Taylor (Cherry Jones), is preparing to be sworn in as America's first female president. And she immediately locks horns with headstrong outgoing President Noah Daniels (Powers Boothe) over whether the U.S. should provide military aid to avert a Sengalan coup by Colonel Benjamin Juma (horror vet Tony Todd).

Back in the hot zone, the tables are soon turned on Jack, and he gets a taste of his own medicine — strung up on bamboo poles, he's beaten and burned with a hot machete. For a moment, Jack appears to have been broken, crying and whimpering as he gives up the location of the children's hiding place to his captors. Of course it's all an act, and in short order, Jack's torturer becomes just another number in the body count.

As the U.S. rolls up its military forces and aid workers stationed in Sengala, it's a race against time (would this be 24 if it wasn't?) to get the children to the evacuation point ... and, hopefully, safety in America.

Some of the political machinations back in Washington aren't particularly interesting, as we've been down that road countless times before. But it's truly refreshing to see Jack in a situation that doesn't involve dirty bombs or domestic terrorists for a change. These are still real-world problems 24 is tackling, but ones that aren't as well-publicized, or as glamorous as Jack's Los Angeles "adventures." We finally have a righteous Jack back, one whose motives and methods are black-and-white. There's no playing politics, no vaguely justified torture — just a hero protecting a group of innocent children from the monsters who want to turn them killers.

Unsurprisingly, Jack succeeds in getting the boys to safety (hearing Jack order his charges at one point, "Everybody hold hands!" is priceless). Of course there are bullet-riddled obstacles along the way; the question is never whether or not Jack will succeed, though, but how — and what will be lost along the way. Redemption's haunting final scene, which echoes news footage of American choppers hastily withdrawing from Vietnam, provides one answer to that question.

These two hours fly by, and if this prequel — and the gripping trailer for Season 7 — are true indications of where the show is heading, the next 24 should be quite a ride.