24 - The Complete 4th Season

Review By: Benjamin Lee
BenjaminLee@TheCinemaSource.com

I really wanted to hate 24.

Ever since the first season in 2000, it’s been one of those shows that I never got round to watching despite the fact that anyone and everyone kept insisting that I would love it. Now, as petty and as pitifully rebellious as it may sound, when people tell me I’m going to love something my immediate reaction is to hate it, regardless of my true feelings.

So the more time went on, the more deliberate my constant avoidance of the show became. Even as I kept on reading more and more acclaim for the show, I was insistent not to be any part of it. But, here I am presented with Season 4 of the show - my weak protest against 24 about to stand trial against the actual show itself.

Now from my 24-worshiping sister and her boyfriend, I’ve been informed that Season 4 is one of the ‘poorer’ seasons. And from the first episode I was already tempted to agree.

It was all cased in heavy exposition and a surprising lack of surprise. But, I stuck with it and from the second episode in, I was annoyingly hooked. In attempting to give a summary of the plot, I’m loathed to give away anything because one of the strengths of the show is the way in which the narrative constantly shifts back and forth.

Without wanting to give a great deal away, the season starts with our hero Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland), a previous employee of the Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU), now working for the Secretary of Defense. He’s also shagging his boss’s daughter Audrey (Kim Raver) although he’s keeping it on the down-low. But it transpires that his CTU days are not over when his boss and his girlfriend get kidnaped by terrorists. But as is the case with 24, it’s never as simple as it seems as the kidnap is just the beginning of a chain of events that will bring the country to it’s knees in just 24 hours.

I can’t remember a show that is quite as life-threateningly addictive as 24. The reason being of course that every episode isn’t a self-contained set of events but another episode in a 24-hour long movie, each one ending in a tantalizing cliffhanger. So when each one ends you just have to continue onto the next to see what happens.

Unlike most recent action thriller movies though, 24 is relentlessly exciting and relatively believable. The show is packed to the rafters with jaw-dropping shocks and nail-biting situations, some on a grand scale and others admirably smaller. The emphasis isn’t just on big-budget explosions. There are numerously well-crafted suspense sequences that are all the more suspenseful because in 24 there really are no rules. Quite simply, anything can happen.

What 24 focuses on, at least in this season, is a succession of short-term goals which are slowly revealed to be about something other than what ...