tvthatdoesntsuck

24
TV Movie: Season Seven Prequel
“Redemption”
Written by Howard Gordon
Directed by Jon Cassar

It’s been a long time coming.  Due to the Writer’s Strike last year, the 24team decided to hold off it’s seventh season until the following year, in order to air a full, twenty-four episode season with no breaks, on time.  It was probably a wise decision, but at a really bad time for the series.  The last we saw protagonist Jack Bauer and his ever changing cast of friends was in the sixth and by far the worst season of the series, so a lot of the fans were already on the fence.  After leakage of many-a-spoiler, chief of which is the resurrectionof Jack’s dead friend Tony Almeida who is now apparently a terrorist, it seemed like 24 was delving even further into the cheesy soap opera plots that made up the sixth season.  So not only did they leave us with a bad season, they delivered a really odd concept for a seventh season… and then we heard nothing from them for about a year and a half.  Until last night.  24 returned with an original TV movie, a very hyped event that acts as a bridge between last season and the upcoming seventh season.  I was skeptical, for all the reasons listed above, but hoped the once brilliant team behind 24 would remind me how great that show used to be.  So what’s the verdict?

Eh.

Not bad.  Certainly not good enough to win back whatever viewers they lost last season.  The story seems to be caught between “unimportant prequel” and “standalone story,” and that lack of focus is a bit overpowering.  Instead of focusing on Jack Bauer’s redemption, which we fans were lead to believe would be the focus of the film, a lot of time is spent developing the political angle of the upcoming season, as well as developing a few bureaucratic villains that do little on screen but plot and twist their sizable mustaches.

The stuff that did go on with Jack was okay.  The fight scenes weren’t the best of 24, nor did the team go as far with the action OR character development as they should have in the first ever 24TV movie, but there were a few impressive touches of character development.  The basic plot involves Jack helping an old friend with a school he’s set up in Africa (specifically, the made-up nation of Sangala).  Things quickly get ugly when a team of rebels attacks the school, wishing the recruit the children into their army, forcing Jack to jump into action and save the kids.  This forces Jack to come out of hiding, and–in efforts to rescue the children–surrender himself to America, who he’s been on the run from since the end of Season Six.  That’ll be addressed in Season Seven, and I thought that part of the plot was really well done, as it worked well with the theme of the movie and also gave the next season a perfect launching point.

A few other good bits were the relationship between Jack and one of the young children, Willy.  We got to see the soft side of Jack again, which is always nice.  Carl Benton, played by Robert Carlyle, was a great addition to the cast, and his performance as the teacher/hero of the students was particularly riveting.  I wish I had something good to say about any of the other plots going on outside of Sangala, but the political scenes were basically old hat for 24.  I recognize that, in doing a prequel for a season that has already been shot, there are really tight limits as to what you can do, but I feel like there was a lot of expectation that 24: Redemption just didn’t meet.  I’ll certainly tune in for Season Seven, but I’m still as skeptical as ever.

5/10

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