24: redemption

And in a separate move of great surprisingness I watched a second film this weekend too!

The film in question was 24: Redemption.

It's intended as a bridge between seasons 6 and 7 of 24. I've obviously not seen season 7 yet, as it's only on satellite, but it comes out on DVD fairly soon.

Season 6 was a disappointing season, overall. Part of the problem 24 has is that it's built up a lot of baggage.

In the first season clearly everything and everyone was new. In the second season many of the characters returned; however one thing they did was to throw in some very neat twists involving those existing characters. The best and clearest of these involved a character called Nina who, in essence, turned out to be a bad guy where we all thought she was a good guy.

Now while that was a brilliant twist it ended up setting something of a tone for the show. Firstly, it started a big trend of treacherous women. Basically, if there's a woman on the show (and especially if she's involved with Jack Bauer) then she's almost certainly hiding something or is a full-on dirty terrorist.

Now that's okay, since a big part of 24 has always been the paranoia and not knowing who you can trust, but it does come across as a bit cynical at times.

The second tone it set was that any recurring character at some point will come under suspicion. Again, this goes along with the whole paranoia thing, but it does mean they set they end up doubling up on themselves a lot. Oh - he's a traitor now too. Is everyone a damn traitor?

It also created that expectation of recurring characters. In a way, 24 is better when it's dealing with new characters. It's one thing to find out that someone you've only just met is actually a traitor (or conversely turns out to be an undercover agent or something), it becomes cliché that everyone you knew and liked last season turns out to be a spy in this season.

The last tonal element that the Nina plotline set was a little more subtle. In season 1 it was pretty much the case that Jack was just doing what he did because he had too.

If he tortured some guy it was because he had to in order to get the Intel he needed (we'll leave the issue of torture being flawed and ineffective aside). However, because Nina was such a personal betrayal it created a vendetta.

Now if and when Jack pursued Nina and, indeed, got his hands on her, any nasty action he would take like torturing her or killing her was clearly now something eh wanted to do for personal reasons. It was about revenge and also hinted that he enjoyed torturing some people, in certain circumstances. He didn't just want to bring her to justice, he wanted to hurt her.

And that also strayed into the area of suggesting Jack might enjoy being a sadist. In other words, because his motives were muddied for Nina, they were generally muddied too.

But what about 24: Redemption?

Well, the basic idea is it's set in Africa. Jack is on the run from being called to justice in the US and nobody he encounters there is a recurring character.

Indeed, even in the stuff set in the States there's a sweep and clear tone to it - the old president is on the way out and a new one coming in. Plus there's a brand new bad guy.

It even looks like the bad guy in question is a proper, higher up bad guy. In previous seasons of 24 one of my frustrations is that Jack never really gets to grips with the proper bad guys. There's often a secret cabal of bad guys in the background who are pulling the strings, and Jack never even gets to know about them, let alone takes the fight to them.

The whole torture issue is somewhat addressed too. The character played by Robert Carlisle is a compatriot of Jack's and basically tortured to death someone who didn't actually know anything and therefore gave false info that resulted in a mission going pear-shaped.

This is good, but the problem in a sense is that although Jack has kind of tortured the wrong people on some occasions, it's never been that clear cut in the same way. It's almost saying Jack is 'better' than Carlisle's character, so it's okay for him to torture people.

They have ended up relying on physical torture a little too much for me in 24. I can see the problem - the show is set over 24 hours. That's not enough time to have him using proper interrogation techniques, which might take days. They also want to keep the show generally fast paced - dashing here and there, trying to capture/stop the terrorists rather than focusing on getting information out of people who have already been captured.

But it gets a little repetitive. I think they could do more in terms of psychological 'torture'. It's like there was one where killed a terrorist's family in front of him until he talked. I mean it was revealed they faked it, but still it's more interesting than just punching someone in the face or stabbing them or whatever.

Anyway, overall 24: Redemption is quite good. It's certainly nice to see some fresh places and people and I hope it continues into the 7th season.