Jack Bauer of '24' seeks 'Redemption' in movie

Jack hasn't been back for 18 months. That's as long as Agent Bauer spent in that Chinese prison after the show's fifth season.
For die-hard fans of Fox's 24, the wait amounts to their own form of torture, so many will savor Sunday's 24: Redemption (8 ET/PT), a two-hour real-time prequel to Season 7, due Jan. 11. The movie is designed to fill in the gaps and restart the franchise.

Blame last winter's writers' strike for the delay. The series had filmed just eight episodes before the three-month walkout; unable to deliver all 24 in time for its January to May schedule, the season was shelved for a year.

There was worry in a depressed TV climate whether the long Sopranos-style break would hurt chances of the series maintaining its audience, especially after what many critics considered a sub-par sixth season in which it averaged 13.2 million viewers.

So Fox executives asked for a two-hour movie and suggested it be set on Inauguration Day, the better to capitalize on the real-life one that will take place less than two months later.

FIND MORE STORIES IN: Washington | United States Senate | Africa | China | Fox | Los Angeles | South Africa | Broadway | Abu Ghraib | Pacific Ocean | Sopranos | Gitmo | Inauguration Day | Audrey | Peter Liguori | Phillip | Redemption | Howard Gordon | Allison Taylor | President Logan | Agent Bauer
"This is a legacy show, a cornerstone show for the network," says Fox chairman Peter Liguori. "Getting 24 back as relevant as possible is critical to the launch of the show. That imagery is helping us."

When we last left Jack (Kiefer Sutherland) and his counterterrorist crew in May 2007, the bad guys, including his father, Phillip (James Cromwell), were vanquished. But Jack, distraught over another very bad day that ended with his love Audrey (Kim Raver) in a coma, wandered along the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, a lone man with a gun.

Watching that final image, "we don't know whether Jack is going to jump, or throw his gun into the water, or descend into madness," says executive producer Howard Gordon, who wrote Sunday's movie. "It was by far our most ambiguous and oblique ending, and certainly our most existential one."

But, he says, "because it was unclear, it was kind of an opportunity" to bridge the divide between that scene and the one that opens Season 7, as Jack faces a congressional panel into his torture tactics. "How did Jack get from a cliff to a Senate hearing? The prequel was the perfect opportunity to tell that story."

Three years have passed

And so it does. Jack has been wandering the world for three years, enough time for President Noah Daniels (Powers Boothe) to lose a re-election bid to Allison Taylor (Cherry Jones).

Taylor is inaugurated in the movie's two-hour time span, just as rebels in the fictional African country of Sangala are preparing to overthrow the government, conscripting children as soldiers to help their cause.

Enter Jack, visiting old special-forces buddy Carl Benton (Robert Carlyle), who's running a school and fears for the safety of his students.

Jack has his own burden. He's being subpoenaed to answer for his use of torture as a CTU agent in another parallel to real-life events. He's "wanted by the government he's bailed out so many times," Gordon says, and "disillusioned with its hypocrisy," referring to the incident when President Logan (Gregory Itzin) tried to have him killed.

Sutherland says Jack "has been working under this unbelievable blind faith and loyalty to the government. Then his eyes are opened on many levels. He's in a more interesting place because he's making decisions for himself. He seems more in control of what he chooses to do, as opposed to running as fast as (he) can to whatever problem there is."

The movie shifts between the action in Sangala (it was shot in South Africa, far from 24's familiar Los Angeles backdrops) and Washington during the transfer of power between Daniels and Taylor.

The series has had good and bad, black and white presidents. Its first female leader is "very serious and very committed to restoring stability in this country and also the country's reputation around the world, not unlike where we are now," says Jones, a well-known Broadway actress in a rare TV role. During the season, "she takes on an unpopular intervention in another country and takes it on for moral reasons."

And while 24 has been championed in some conservative circles for its muscular approach to combating terrorism, Gordon says there's a new reality.

"The show's changed for many reasons because the country's changed," Gordon says. "The post-9/11 scenario of wish fulfillment that Jack represented was replaced by some of the things that happened in the country, from Gitmo to Abu Ghraib. Our conduct in the world became a bigger issue, and Jack became a darker, more complex character."

At the same time, he says, "we couldn't renounce Jack's behavior; it would discredit the entire series. But the issue comes back time and again, and we give voice to the price that's paid for the 'whatever it takes' mind-set. I don't want to over-politicize the show, but we couldn't ignore it."

Strike allowed for changes

The strike forced an unusual production schedule, but it gave producers time to retool the series, a luxury they haven't always had. After "two false starts," a plan to put Jack in Africa for the early part of the season was scrapped and later retooled for the movie. Eight episodes were shot last fall. Then the strike halted production late last year. When work resumed, four more episodes were filmed.

By then, Fox decided to postpone the series and asked for a stand-alone movie to air this month instead, as a marketing tactic to relaunch the show. (Redemption will be out on DVD next week.)

So the Los Angeles crew took a break as the prequel was shot in South Africa in June and July. Then producers went back and reshot parts of early episodes.

"We had to work very quickly," Gordon says. "We were writing forward and backward at the same time," working on the prequel while adjusting scenes in episodes already shot for the season, which takes place four months later.

Without a massive threat, the movie "is not a thriller in the traditional sense," he says. "It feels very different from the threat and energy that we've often had. I was much more concerned with resetting Jack's emotional state."

But Redemption stands alone as a self-contained movie with a satisfying ending, and it sets up both the new president and the African conflict that becomes the new season's core event.

In addition to President Taylor and her husband, played by Colm Feore, Jon Voight is introduced as Jonas Hodges, the requisite villain, operating a shadowy black-ops company. Rebel Col. Dubaku (Hakeem Kae-Kazim) also resurfaces. Outgoing President Daniels and aide Tom Lennox (Peter MacNicol) are holdovers who appear only in the movie.

Although the movie wasn't part of the initial plan, "the season is going to play stronger" as a result, Gordon says. "People will have a more visceral connection to Africa and a more personal connection to Allison Taylor." Even so, "you can miss it and still watch Season 7 and get everything you need to get."

Sitting out until January or later: Trusty CTU colleague Chloe O'Brian (Mary Lynn Rajskub), boss Bill Buchanan (James Morrison) and ex-presidential bodyguard Aaron Pierce (Glenn Morshower).

A most surprising return will be Tony Almeida (Carlos Bernard), who was left for dead at the end of Season 5.

Jack is "solicited for a small aspect of an operation to find Tony, though I don't believe he is alive," Sutherland says.

Gordon says Tony's secret resurrection was "worth the risk" of straining credibility because Almeida "didn't get the death he deserved."

But CTU is gone; instead, the agents have been placed under an "off-the-books" wing of the FBI. And so is Los Angeles, the setting for most of the past six seasons. The action largely takes place in Washington this season.

Will Redemption, and the more careful plotting that extra time allowed, help 24 from falling into what Sutherland calls "the same (midseason) pothole we've always struggled with"?

We'll see.

"I can't imagine how tough it is for the writers," he says. "Every time I try, my head hurts, so I stop."

Can't wait!

So when it comes down to it, Jack Bauer has had 6 really bad/action packed days

kpowers said:

How many murders is that per hour?

Graycap23 said:

Not even going to do the math on that one

kpowers said:

lol.....

kpowers said:

There are a few 24 comics which go into a bit more detail on the life of Jack. "Nightfall" covers the whole Bosnia stealth operation Jack did for President Palmer. Then there is a collection of prequel comics to seasons 1, 2 and 3 which are also cool little escapades.

But I cant wait for this movie and new season to start up!

I just watch the preview for it and I can't wait.

Jack.

i'm so over his ass but we're so DVRing it anyway.