24 - Season One Such a simple idea--yet so fiendishly complex in the execution.
24, as surely everyone knows by now, is a thriller that takes places over 24 hours, midnight to midnight, in 24 one-hour episodes (well, 45-minute episodes if you subtract the commercials). Everything takes place in real time, which means no flashbacks, no flash-forwards, no handy time-dissolves. Every strand of the plot has to be dovetailed and interlocked so things happen just when they should, in the right amount of time. Not that easy. Creator Robert Cochran and his team of writers and directors have done an impressive job of putting the jigsaw together and keeping the tension ratcheted up high, as federal agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) runs around L.A. trying to stall an assassination attempt on an African American presidential candidate and rescue his wife and daughter from the clutches of the Balkan baddies. Twists, turns, revelations, and cliffhangers are tossed at us with satisfying regularity. It's not perfect: we get some hokey plot devices (instant amnesia, anybody?); the final twist makes no sense whatsoever; there are altogether too many huggy family moments; and as for Dennis Hopper's "Serbian" accent....
24 - Season Two
Jack Bauer is having another one of his "very bad days" in the second season of the groundbreaking real-time thriller 24. Once again the hours are ticking by with more guaranteed cliffhangers than a convention of mountain climbers. Holed up in a Los Angeles condo and estranged from his daughter, Jack is no longer on the government payroll; unfortunately for him, this small fact doesn't seem to matter to President David Palmer and the NSA, who call him back in to the CTU and give him 24 hours to infiltrate a terrorist organization that is planning to detonate a dirty bomb in the city of angels. All Jack wants is to get his daughter out of the city, unfortunately Kim's new employer, the abusive father of the child she is nannying, has other ideas.
24 - Season Three
There's not one cougar to be found in 24's dynamic third season, and that's good news for everyone. After Jack Bauer's daughter Kim (Elisha Cuthbert) survived hokey hazards in season 2, she's now a full-time staffer at CTU, the L.A.-based intelligence beehive that's abuzz once again--three years after the events of "Day Two"--when a vengeful terrorist threatens to release a lethal virus that could wipe out much of the country's population. Jack (Kiefer Sutherland) attempts to broker a deal for the virus involving drug kingpin Ramon Salazar (Joaquim de Almeida), whose operation Jack successfully infiltrated at high personal cost: to maintain his cover, he got hooked on heroin. That potentially deadly triangle--drug lords, addiction, and bioterrorism on a massive scale--sets the 24-hour clock ticking in a tight, action-packed plot involving a potential traitor in CTU's midst; the return of TV's greatest villainesses in Nina Meyers (Sarah Clarke) and former First Lady Sherry Palmer (Penny Johnson Jerald); a troubled romance between Kim and Jack's new partner Chase (James Badge Dale); and a scandalized reelection campaign by president David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert), who monitors CTU as they struggle to (literally) save the day.
24 - Season Four
Oh boy. Here we go again! Just another exciting day in the life of 24 super-agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland). The season kicks off with a deadly terrorist strike resulting in the kidnapping of his new boss, the U.S. Secretary of Defense James Heller (William Devane). Although a fired, ex-employee of the Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU), it is no surprise who is going to shift into full gear to bring the terrorists to justice. However, it doesn't take the super-agent long to discover the kidnapping of his boss is part of a much larger plan, master-minded by Habib Marvan (Arnold Voslo) the middle eastern terrorist cell leader the US government has been trying to track down for years.
DVD ~ Kiefer Sutherland
DVD ~ Kiefer Sutherland
DVD ~ Kiefer Sutherland
DVD ~ Kiefer Sutherland
by Pat Conroy
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