Fox Home Entertainment
Release date: November 24th, 2008
MSRP: $26.98
Stars: Kiefer Sutherland, Cherry Jones, Bob Gunton, Colm Feore, Powers Boothe, Robert Carlyle
I almost took a pass on 24: Redemption. I’m glad I didn’t. This is vintage Jack Bauer, reluctant but efficient killing machine. Jack is a perfect pragmatist. He does what need to be done. No more, no less. He won’t back down from the ugliness and he takes as good as he gives. And he gives good.
We open with Jack working (off some karma?) in a small boys school in some non-place in Africa for Carl, old friend and former comrade in Special Forces. A Rebel Colonel from a neighboring country raiding for ‘soldiers’, as young as eight, kills one and seriously wounds another of Carl’s boys when they decide not to volunteer. As Carl races back with the wounded boy he calls Jack, who is leaving the school to dodge a Congressional subpoena, and says “Don’t let them take my kids.” He won’t.
What follows is one of the best combat scenes I’ve seen in way too long. Oh there are lots with more explosions and gunfire than this, and heroes who have read the script and know they are not going to get hurt, much less killed, but this one is like watching out your back door. It’s that real and Kiefer Sutherland has read the script but it doesn’t show. You know they are not going to kill Jack off in hour one of twenty-four but you worry anyway. Damn good stuff.
The Specials are pretty standard but worth a listen as you have the star, writer and director talking about something that came together very much as they had hoped. The extra 10 minutes or so is extended scenes, many of which I wish they could have left in as they are nicely rewarding in their own right.
The others are ‘Blood Never Dry’ a report on child soldiers. An estimated ten percent of all the soldiers in the world right now are under thirteen. This is truly chilling. The Making of Twenty Four: Redemption and the first 17 minutes of season seven.
If this is any indication, the Twenty Four franchise has quite a bit of life left in it.
This is the intro to season seven but is a fine stand alone movie and if you missed it…well you missed something.
Order 24: Redemption from Amazon.
Lee Crawford
For more reviews from Lee, and the rest of the Crimespree crew, check out the index of reviews.
