Posts Tagged ‘kiefer sutherland’

SOURCE: NY Daily News

Monday night’s two-hour finale of Fox’s “24″ is a bloody mess.

It’s that good, and yes, we expected no less.

Like “The Sopranos,” “The Shield” and other A-list crime-and-morality dramas, “24″ doesn’t pretend that the end of the show means injustice, corruption and evil can magically be made to disappear.

So the show provides some resolution to this season’s story line, which revolved around the human and moral cost of trying to craft a Middle East peace treaty.

At the same time, Monday’s finale makes it clear that counterterrorism agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) will always be outnumbered and outgunned in his battle to stop the bad guys.

The best Jack can do is stick his finger in the dam from time to time while he searches for the occasional ray of light.

The last time he found one of those, however, in fellow agent Renee Walker (Annie Wersching), she was promptly killed.

Renee’s death continues to set up this season’s climactic action, as a near-psychotic Jack seeks to kill everyone involved. Even if that person is a head of state.

It’s vintage Jack, an equalizer whose raw fury we understand.

“I would have accepted justice by law,” Jack says, in what could serve as a mission statement for the whole eight-season run of “24.” “But that was taken from me. [So] I am judge and jury.”

That sort of remark explains why Jack has been compared to Clint Eastwood’s justice-dealing cop Dirty Harry. Jack’s world, however, has never been as black-and-white as Harry’s, and things don’t change Monday just because the series is ending.

His adversaries include true creeps like robotic Russians and former President Charles Logan (Gregory Itzin), whose every utterance makes your skin crawl. It includes good people who have lost their way, like President Allison Taylor (Cherry Jones).

He also runs with some good people who stay good, like young agent Cole Ortiz (Freddie Prinze Jr.) and loyal associate Chloe O’Brian (Mary Ann Rajskub).

The fact he and Chloe at one point are yelling threats at each other underscores how a few bad decisions at the top can poison the whole world.

So yes, the world is a mess. It’s also bloody, and while Monday’s finale may have fewer outright deaths than usual, it compensates for any shortfall in body count with nice touches like having body parts bitten off.

All props to Mike Tyson.

It shouldn’t be any major spoiler to say that in the end, neither Jack Bauer nor “24″ leaves us with any rosy illusions about saving or cleaning up the world.

Jack never stops trying to make his corner a little better, however, and in the process, he closes out “24″ the same way he ushered it in: as a fast-paced, first-rate action-adventure that pauses just long enough to show us a heart.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/2010/05/20/2010-05-20_24_clocks_out_with_a_winner.html#ixzz0ocDHwvY6

SOURCE: Detroit News

Jack Bauer and company have made clock-watching an edge-of-your-seat adventure for eight exciting seasons on Fox’s popular espionage drama “24.”

But all good things come to an end, and Monday, Jack (Emmy-winner Kiefer Sutherland) will save the day in a two-hour finale guaranteed to be explosive, fun and open-ended enough to leave room for future specials.

Fans have come to expect action-packed fury from this show, with its implausible plots, fights, CTU moles and villains. For all its wild ways, “24″ also has proven to be as topical as it is groundbreaking in both its real-time delivery and its inspirationally diverse casting, particularly when it came to its commanders-in-chief.

To celebrate this iconic series in all its glory, we’ve compiled a list of 24 of the most memorable moments and characters. Enjoy.

Devastating deaths

1. Jack’s wife, Teri Bauer (season one): This poor woman (played by Leslie Hope) suffered a great deal before being killed, including a bout with amnesia. Teri’s death, at the hands of Nina Myers (Sarah Clarke), affected Jack and Kim (Elisha Cuthbert) for life.

2. President David Palmer (season five): Few deaths shocked fans more than watching the assassination of TV’s most notable African-American president (Dennis Haysbert).

3. Tony Almeida (season five): We watched him die in Jack’s arms. How on earth did he (Carlos Bernard) live? More on that later.

4. Curtis Manning (season six): It’s hard to decide what is worse — that Curtis (Roger R. Cross), one of CTU’s best agents, died or that Jack killed him.

5. Lynn McGill (season five): Lynn’s (Sean Astin) death was necessary so others could live. Sadly, the nerve gas attack could’ve been prevented if he had admitted his key card was stolen.

6. Ryan Chappelle (season three): He started out as a bureaucratic nemesis within CTU but Chappelle (Paul Schulze) died with dignity.
Outrageous storylines

7. Kim and the mountain lion (season two): In the course of one day, Kim, Jack’s daughter, fled from her boss’ homicidal husband, got stuck in a bear trap, fought off mountain lions, escaped a kidnapper and became a hostage.

8. Tony isn’t dead (season seven): Although we watched him die, apparently we missed the part where some bad guys injected him with a serum that brought him back to life.

9. President Wayne Palmer’s coma (season six): Wayne Palmer (D.B. Woodside) was not as strong as his big brother but when he suffered injuries that left him in a coma, it became clear the show’s writers had no idea what to do with this character.

10. Jack kicks his heroin addiction (season three): Google the words “Jack,” “24″and “heroin” and a joke appears that reads “Jack was never addicted to heroin. Heroin was addicted to Jack.” As laughable as this is, it seemed true when Jack kicked smack and took down the bad guys in just 24 hours one season.

11. Jack is a grandfather (season eight): The season opened with an adorable little sprite calling Jack grandpa. Yeah right. While biologically it is possible, we have to note that Sutherland is 43 in real life and Cuthbert is 27.

12. President Allison Taylor makes her daughter chief of staff (season seven): Hmm. Is it less believable that President Taylor (Emmy-winner Cherry Jones) would make her daughter chief of staff overnight or that she would turn her in to the authorities for plotting Jonas Hodges’ (Jon Voight) murder?
Malicious moles

13. Nina Myers (season one): Nina (Sarah Clarke) had an affair with Jack and killed his wife. Oh yeah, and she was secretly working for the bad guys.

14. Roger Stanton (season two): The director of the NSA conspired against the president to stop him from sharing intelligence with the Middle East.

15. Marianne Taylor (season four): Henry Powell (Robertson Dean) hired Marianne (Aisha Tyler) to be a CTU spy … before she was killed.

16. Spencer Wolff (season five): Spencer (Jonah Lotan), an analyst, hooked up with Chloe (Trenton native Mary Lynn Rajskub) while secretly working with presidential mole Walt Cummings (John Allen Nelson).

17. Sean Hillinger (season seven): Sean (Rhys Coiro, “Entourage”) was an FBI mole working with senatorial chief of staff Ryan Burnett (Eyal Podell).

18. Dana Walsh (season eight): Further proof CTU needed to do a better job at screening its employees. Dana, aka Jenny Scott (Katee Sackoff, “Battlestar Galactica”), secretly worked with the Russians until Jack killed her.
Vicious villains

19. President Charles Logan (season five): No president (Gregory Itzin) on “24″ has been more diabolical.

20. Victor Drazen (season one): Was a vengeful Balkan warlord (Dennis Hopper)

21. Syed Ali (season two): (Francesco Quinn) was a religious extremist

22. Ramon Salazar (season three): This drug lord (Joaquin de Almeida) helped Jack stop a virus.

23. Stephen Saunders (season three): Was a bio-terrorist (played by Paul Blackthorne) with a grudge.

24. Habib Marwan (season four): This Turkish terrorist (Arnold Vosloo) was behind a number of attacks.

SOURCE: USA Today

We can’t let one bad day ruin an entire series.

Granted, it’s hard to maintain perspective when we’re clenched in the last-gasp grip of one of the worst 24 seasons ever. But sad as this may seem, it’s not unusual for a great TV series to leave us wanting less.

Yet less or more, make no mistake: 24(Fox, Monday, 8 ET/PT) was a great TV series.

MORE: ’24′ finally runs out of time
OUR FAVORITE THINGS: 24 reasons we loved ’24′
GALLERY: ’24,’ 24-7

Not a great drama, which is a distinction people sometimes fail to make. Its gifts are propulsion and tension; deep explorations of the human condition are the province of other shows. Yet there has always been a place on TV for series that exist to tap into your adrenaline, and few shows have ever consistently caused levels to spike as high as 24.

But there has never been a show quite like the “real-time”-driven 24 —or a character quite like the tortured, torturing Jack Bauer, a world-savior superhero beautifully layered with real-world emotions by Kiefer Sutherland. And odds are we’ll never see their likes again. An idea can be endlessly copied, but it can be original only once.

The essential genius of 24 is that it took what had been seen as commercial TV limitations — the rigid hour-long structure, the rhythmic rise-and-fall of the ad-accommodating act breaks, the need to fill a 22-plus episode season — and made them virtues. Instead of fearing TV’s internal clock, 24 embraced it, using it to drive each episode and to unite the episodes into one 24-hour day. Even the digital-clock graphics and the ticking on the soundtrack served to ratchet up suspense by enhancing the sensation of time passing and deadlines approaching.

Obviously, however often we may have used the term “real-time,” there was never anything real about 24′s treatment of time and spatial relationships. From the first season, which tried to stick most closely to the one-hour conceit, to the last, 24′s time became amusingly elastic when it came to things like crosstown commutes.

There has never been a year when you didn’t wonder whether people wouldn’t be more tired or rattled if so many crises, personal and professional, had all fallen into a single day.

Yet think of the audacity of breaking — and stretching — a Bondian adventure into 24 time-driven, hour-long installments. Is it any wonder the show relied on red herrings and multiple conspiracies, shifting every six hours or so? It has always been senseless to complain about the inevitable starts and stops in the story, the way villains get away just before being caught or die just before revealing crucial information.

That’s part of the price of admission for what has been, overall, a terrific ride.

Over the years, some plots were too clearly stall-tactic diversions (Kim, meet cougar), or collapsed so completely, they forced the writers to improvise new solutions. This season, the backtracking was too obvious (the transformation of Dana from Arkansas convict to Russian superspy) and the plot contrivances too stunningly illogical. But think of Nina’s revelation as the show’s first and best mole — another improvised plot point — and remember all the other times 24 played with your expectations and delivered a delicious jolt of surprise.

Remember as well that few people would have bet when the show was announced that it would run one season, let alone eight, and that the majority of them would be wildly entertaining. And for that, much of the credit goes to the show’s creators, Joel Surnow and Robert Cochran, who had the wisdom to pitch a show about terrorism when it was most on our collective minds, and to make it fairly apolitical.

People often parsed 24 for right-wing or left-wing bias, but its only consistent philosophy has been an ends-justify-the-means view of violence (at least as exercised by Jack) and an anti-authority belief in the inevitable incompetence of all organizations. On 24, it’s always the individual hero to the rescue.

And what a hero Jack has been, and what a sometimes underappreciated performance Sutherland has given us. Plot points have often defied belief; Jack never has, despite the multiple horrendous injuries he has had to shake off. And that’s a tribute to Sutherland’s commitment, talent and skill.

That’s true even now, as grief has turned Jack into a deranged, nihilistic killer, shooting an unarmed woman and gutting a defenseless man. You can’t help feeling that the writers have trashed a TV hero to set up a big-screen antihero, diminishing our affection for him and the series in the process.

Which is why, if you’re a fan, the best response is to mentally toss this season aside and think instead about the show as a whole and the people who have passed through it. 24 has never been known as an “actor’s” series (with only Sutherland and the remarkable Cherry Jones winning acting Emmys).

But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t boasted some great performances, starting with the beloved prickly Mary Lynn Rajskub, and including Leslie Hope, Dennis Haysbert, Penny Johnson Jerald, Sarah Clarke, Xander Berkley, Shohreh Aghdashloo, James Morrison, Jayne Atkinson, Colm Feore, Gregory Itzin and Jean Smart.

Their legacy, and the legacy of their show, is intact. No matter how this day ends.

May 21, 2010

May 28, 2010

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24: Jack (Kiefer Sutherland) readies for a dangerous move in the climactic two-hour 24 series finale episode “2:00-4:00 PM” airing Monday, May 24 (8:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. ©2010 Fox Broadcasting Co. Cr: Ray Mickshaw/FOX

24: Jack (Kiefer Sutherland) readies for a dangerous move in the climactic two-hour 24 series finale episode “2:00-4:00 PM” airing Monday, May 24 (8:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. ©2010 Fox Broadcasting Co. Cr: Ray Mickshaw/FOX

24: Chloe (Mary Lynn Rajskub) is faced with a difficult decision in the climactic two-hour 24 series finale episode “2:00-4:00 PM” airing Monday, May 24 (8:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. ©2010 Fox Broadcasting Co. Cr: Kelsey McNeal/FOX

24: Jack (Kiefer Sutherland) contemplates his next move in the climactic two-hour 24 series finale episode “2:00-4:00 PM” airing Monday, May 24 (8:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. ©2010 Fox Broadcasting Co. Cr: Kelsey McNeal/FOX

24: President Taylor (Cherry Jones, R) discusses the delicate international situation with Charles Logan (Gregory Itzin, L) in the climactic two-hour 24 series finale episode “2:00-4:00 PM” airing Monday, May 24 (8:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. ©2010 Fox Broadcasting Co. Cr: Kelsey McNeal/FOX

24: Jack (Kiefer Sutherland) readies for a dangerous move in the climactic two-hour 24 series finale episode “2:00-4:00 PM” airing Monday, May 24 (8:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. ©2010 Fox Broadcasting Co. Cr: Kelsey McNeal/FOX

24: Chloe (Mary Lynn Rajskub, L), Arlo (John Boyd, C) and Cole (Freddie Prinze Jr., R) work to save Jack’s life in the climactic two-hour 24 series finale episode “2:00-4:00 PM”

SOURCE: FOX All Access

In nearly nine years of playing Jack Bauer on “24,” Kiefer Sutherland found himself in plenty of difficult situations, and he didn’t always emerge unscathed. While viewers might assume that Sutherland left most of the tough work to a stunt double, he told us that wasn’t always the case, and with the series coming to a close, he reflects back on all the punishment he’s taken in an effort to enhance the authenticity of the show. “24″ is down to its final five hours, and the countdown continues tonight at 9/8c on Fox.