IMDb user comments for
"24" (2001)

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441 comments in total

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242 out of 378 people found the following comment useful :-
An entertaining, classy and action-packed drama that breaks new ground in the television world!, 21 February 2005

Author: James Lamont (jameslamont) from London, England

This show can best be described as the most innovative, ground-breaking television show of the past 50 years. The reason this show is so ground breaking is the fact that it has used split screen cameras, and a real time format to create the element of a quality made show.

The show follows the worst days of likable, down-to-earth hero Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) and each episode chronicles every hour of the day, and is shot in real-time. What makes this show so unique are the character relationships, the shows writing and the attention to detail.Whether the shows themes are about kidnappings, bomb threats, personal vendettas, assassinations, or terrorist attacks the themes are handled in such a compelling way that the viewer is hooked at every jump and turn.

The viewers really learn to care about Jack as we learn more about his life and his past. Kiefer Sutherland was perfect for the role as Jack Bauer, so much that many people describe him as "born for the role". Dennis Haysbert does a superb acting job as Sen David Palmer and the show has an excellent group of characters who make the support team of the show and these include Carols Bernard as Tony and Elisha Cuthbert as Kim Bauer. A big bonus of the show is that 24 is constantly surprising viewers in unexpected moments, and you never know what to expect on the show. Anything can and does happen.

The scripts on this show are top class and they deserve a mention in their own right. The attention to detail as I mentioned earlier is prominent with the real time aspect of the show. There are very rarely any mistakes with the time aspect of the show, and this is a strength of the show. The show always uses multiple split screen camera shots and this is innovative work because it helps to make the show seem realistic and also in real time. You will also see most of the camera focused on Jacks point of view and this is to make the show from a humans point of view and it helps to bring the viewer more involved in the show.

The story may change; new characters may arrive and leave but one thing always stays the same; the underlying story of the show is about one mans fight to do what is right. If there is a bad aspect to this show it may be that some of the action sequences are a bit too predictable, but this is rare and should not detach from the viewers viewing pleasure of the show. This show will make you feel every emotion under the sun but nevertheless it is gripping, thrilling storytelling of the highest calibre. Long may this show continue and the legacy of this show will be remembered for many years to come. Miss this at your peril 10/10

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109 out of 136 people found the following comment useful :-
How can a show start so great then slide into muddled stupidity is beyond me?!?!, 18 November 2002
Author: hawksburn from sydney, australia

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

WARNING: There are spoilers contained within. If you don't want to know certain plot twists I suggest you skip my review.

Let's just say that at the beginning I loved this show. Addicted to it you might say. Great premise, brilliant execution, smart acting. The whole idea of it and the way it was done, just excellent. Anyway, that's the first 8 hours. The second 8, yeah ok I'm still watching every Monday @ 8:30. Twists and turns seem to be happening with more & more regularity, but I'm still clued up to the plot, haven't lost track. Last 8 hours I'm thinking "What the hells going on?!?!". No, I haven't become disoriented and confused, I'm just wondering when did this show go from being reasonably believable to becoming logically incomprehensible?!?!

I trace it back to the episode where the car rolls down the hill and explodes and Jacks wife, thinking her daughter has just died, collapses in shock then wakes up and spends the next few episodes in trauma-induced amnesia. From this point on the show is trying to constantly top itself from episode to episode with "most unbelievable twist". Up until then, perfect. Between the hours of 12am & 10am it's got a sharply executed plot that could frighteningly ring true, all the characters (good and bad) are believable. It also gives the viewers enough time to get their bearings, to take in the consequences of what's unfolding before them. The betrayals, the red herrings.

After 10am it lapses dramatically. The show seems to become too smart for it's own good. It piles one twist on top of another without giving any time to work out how it all fits together. [WARNING: MAJOR SPOILER] I wasn't at all surprised that it turned out to be the head female agent (I forget her name) who was the traitor. One could see it coming a mile away. Not because the clues were apparent, just because there was no other real character to logically pin it on. Then having done that, having made that decision, I was left thinking of all the previous episodes and wondering "How?!?!", it didn't make sense.

The reason I was gripped by this show was first and foremost because it was intelligent and believable. Secondly because of the (cutting edge for U.S tv) narrative structure and direction. This all fails once the 2nd half becomes nothing more than a popcorn flick. If it had started out that way or maintained the initial equilibrium it kicked itself off with, I would've enjoyed it more. The change from one to the other is what ruined it for me. It turns from serious thriller into James Bond.

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104 out of 131 people found the following comment useful :-
A Nice Try, but Vastly Overrated, 3 May 2005
Author: Darguz from Battle Creek, MI

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

First, let me say that there is first-rate acting all around in this show. Sutherland and everyone else do a marvelous job. There are some interesting characters, well-written. And the format, of course, is the inspired part.

But it's as if they spent their whole inspiration budget on that; overall, the show is rather lame. I'm sure it's a tremendous challenge to stretch a single story over 24 hours, keep it consistent and believable and keep the suspense up. Unfortunately, it appears they were not up to the challenge. The plot just gets stretched way too thin, and of course when you stretch something that thin, holes start showing up.

One of the biggest distractions for me was how well-prepared the bad guys were for contingencies they had no idea would happen. I just can't imagine Gaines saying, "OK, Kevin, as soon as these punk kids have the girls, you need to kill her father and pretend to be him, just in case Janet escapes and gets hit by a car and goes to the hospital in critical condition but survives, you can be in the hospital and kill her." I don't think so.

Nina helped way too much all through the show for her to have turned out to be the mole. When she took Kim and Terri to the safe house, she easily could have killed the two agents and then killed the women.

Kim gets kidnapped. Kim escapes. Kim is recaptured. Kim is rescued. Kim is re-captured.....

One of the worst Exploding Car Scenes I've ever seen. A car rolls 20 feet down a soft embankment....and explodes. Of course. I've never understood why people in movies and TV shows carry around raw nitroglycerin in their cars.

This and much more.

But I was willing to overlook all these, until the end. Nina killing Terri was the next to the last straw. After that, I probably wouldn't have watched any more, but I might have. The *last* straw was the EP's lame excuse for why they did it.

There was exactly one rest point in the first season, and that's when the women are rescued from Gaines. I can understand keeping the suspense up all the way through; it's a suspense show. And they do that very well. But at the end you have to give the characters (and the viewers) a rest and a win.

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199 out of 324 people found the following comment useful :-
A Bona-Fied TV Classic!, 12 May 2002
Author: G-Man-25 from Iowa City, IA

This show definitely has re-written the book on intelligent and credible suspense on TV. Extremely well acted, written and directed. Truly gripping, heart-stopping suspense from one hour to the next. The show is so well done that you can easily forgive the very few plot devices that seem a little weak. When a show gets 99% of everything right, it's very hard to quibble. Keifer Sutherland has never been better as the flawed hero. "24" deserves to be a model on which all future TV suspense thrillers can be compared to. A+++

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97 out of 122 people found the following comment useful :-
Total Scriptwriting Breakdown!!, 21 January 2004
Author: vtec4 from Wisconsin

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

SPOILER ALERT Steam is still coming out of my ears.

I'm not home enough to keep up with a TV series, but the concept of 24 was interesting, so I avoided articles about it and bought the DVD set when it came out. (Unfortunately, I stumbled across the fact that Bauer's wife dies at the end of the first season.) A bicycle accident a week ago left me home recuperating, so I dug out the DVD set and started in.

This was just brilliant drama through early afternoon, although there were some weak points. It started to get a bit tedious when they took Kim and Terri into and out of danger over and over.

But in the 9PM episode, in the prison, when Jack drops his weapon, I completely lost it. I howled and cursed, hit the "open" button, put the disc away and just dropped the whole thing. I won't watch the rest of Season 1, and I won't watch any subsequent episodes. This was the most absolute, total breakdown of scriptwriting I've ever experienced. Jack has the head guy with a gun to his head, he and the others are threatened by people whom he knows well to be ruthless killers and he DROPS HIS WEAPON?!! ARE YOU NUTS?!! AAARGH!

Too bad. They had something interesting going.

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216 out of 360 people found the following comment useful :-
One of the most original and compelling series ever, 11 December 2004

Author: MarshallDillon from germany

Yes... I love this series. I bought it on the big DVD pack with the complete first season, because it isn't available in German television right now. Anyway, I love it because it's not only the concept which makes it thrilling, even without that real-time style it would be extremely exciting and suspenseful. Also, it stars one of my top ten favourite stars, Kiefer Sutherland, and a truckload of exceeding supporting actors. Elisha Cuthbert, Leslie Hope, Sarah Clarke, Xander Berkeley, Dennis Haysbert... I could go on forever, even the characters who die after two episodes are very convincing.

Overall one of the things you can't stop watching after you've seen five minutes of it.

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110 out of 149 people found the following comment useful :-
Quite possibly the worst show I've ever seen, 16 May 2006

Author: petesake33 from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

The fact that so many seem to love this show makes me seriously question my faith in the American public. This show is so bad it's actually, well, just bad. The acting, the writing, the plot development, the technical details and just about everything else is bad to the point of being comical. The show should be renamed "2.5", because that's about the total of viable screen time that was stretched out into this daylong abomination.

Perhaps if the writers had thrown in another overused, Hollywood cliché, 24 could've been worse. Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot. They already used up all the clichés. I find it amusing that anyone was surprised by any outcome of this show when all of the supposed twists and turns wouldn't have been more obvious if they were scrolled, news-ticker style, across the bottom of the screen. Just a few snippets: 1. First, let me start off by saying that if real counterterrorism agents are half as inept as those on "24", then we're all really screwed. These guys couldn't catch a drunk first grader if he came up and bit them in the ass. Cliché is one thing. Stupid is quite another.

2. Hey, you know what would be great? If, when Jack goes to meet his CTU mentor in a darkened, deserted building, the guy got shot right before the was about to give him the key piece of "evidence". Of course, it would only be exciting if this happened right as they were about to make it to safety. Nah, that wouldn't be telegraphed, would it? 3. When Nina discovers that Mason has been keeping from Jack that his family has been attacked at the safe house, she immediately begins working the computers. Tony, seeing this due diligence, asks her if she's checking the hospitals. Tony says this is a good idea. Tony, of course, is a moron, since, raving terrorism expert that he is, should have done this hours ago. Don't blame Tony. The writers made him do it.

4. Or how 'bout when the Drazens attack the DOD prison? Gee, you think a top secret government prison would at least have enough surveillance to detect 8 foreign nationals setting up a communcations bunker 300 yards from a top secret prison? In broad daylight? 5. Of course, once inside the aforementioned prison, which is underground, presumably shielded against some form of electromagnetic radiation in order to protect communications and which is also, by the way, in the middle of freaking nowhere, it's remarkable how everyone's cell phone works.

6. I love how Jack goes six-guns-a-blazing in the last episode, nine-mil in each hand blasting away at the Drazens on the dock. Of course, as a former spec ops soldier, I'm sure he'd know that, aside from totally screwing his aim, all he was really doing was expending his ammo twice as fast. And not hitting anything while doing it. If this guy was specs ops, we're doubly screwed.

7. If it was so easy to cut the power to the prison, why the hell did they need to pay some jackass from the power company? 8. Terri Bauer deserved to get killed. Not for any plot reason, but because Leslie Hope couldn't act her way out of a paper bag. Gee, if it was my husband and kid, I might be distraught, instead of spending the entire time wandering around a secure government facility like a 12 year old on Vicodin, with a goofy smile on my face. I think the producers wrote her out so they wouldn't have to justify paying her again.

9. And speaking of Terri Bauer, wouldn't you think that the hub of the United States' West Coast counter terrorist operations would be at least secure enough to prevent a complete stranger from, you know, wandering around the joint or anything? 10. The NSA dude who got capped in the New Orleans bar: So let me get this straight, an NSA officer is hanging out in a French Quarter bar with an unsecured laptop full of classified information, as well as an encryption device to access, all the while chatting away about it on an unsecured cell phone inside a bar full of complete freaking strangers? Right...

11. Is it me, or did Dennis Hopper sound like he was Dracula from Transylvania? What's up with the accent, D? He sounds like a Marvel comic.

12. You know what would make for compelling TV? If the wife and daughter get kidnapped and all 3 spend about 3 hours of screen time reassuring each other they'll be OK. Couldn't we just accomplish this with a couple lines of dialogue and just move on? 13. What would've happened if Kim Bauer got caught sneaking out of the house? I guess the show would've only been one episode.

14. Why did Rick and Dan have to hang out with the girls in a furniture store? Wouldn't it have been more convenient just to hit them over the head and them bring them to Gaines? 15. At the safe house, why was the CTU agents assigned to guard duty sitting inside the tree trimmer of an electric company truck? What would he have done if he needed to get out quickly? Can't exactly jump down, can you? Of course, since he was trying to be discreet, I'm sure no one would've noticed a truck parked out there for hours on end, working on the same telephone pole? You know, like trained countersurveillance experts or something. On second thought, let's just make the professionals as stupid as possible, so that we can insure more episodes and, thus, greater ad revenue.

Please, do yourself a favor. If you own this DVD set, burn it immediately. You will be glad you did.

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86 out of 103 people found the following comment useful :-
HOW has 24 managed to become so ridiculously stupid, 29 April 2006
Author: laudgi from United Kingdom

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

i loved the first few series but now ... oh my ... by trying to outdo each one b4 have gone into complete unrealism etc the acting ... the lines .... the events ... come on And how they have demonised the president even though the us administration has its flaws i cannot believe he has only himself and his next motorola v3 mobile as his adviser. How is that fone secure its a razr i don't know how u encrypt but cant see it being able to do it. and him from looking an incompetent useless buffoon (end of last season) to Hitler reincarnated. oh and why did they not switch on the computers in the bank and email it news organisations or called them up and played them ... at least that way they would be too many people who knew of the rumor at least and would be asking too many q's when all these people had presumably. oh and how did she have a recording ... how did she get it .... and why were they in LA ... when was the last time the President was in a large city outside LA ... and how did she get a safe -deposit box... obviously that woman lives in D.C so would need a detailed procedure to get one. i could go on forever... oh why oh why

By the way I know what is going on the next episode.

The President will be killed, but as they're transporting his body away his skin will crumble and an alien will come out. But don't worry; Secretary Heller fell into radio-active waters and will know how to kill this beastly alien.

Hope I haven't spoiled next weeks episode for anyone.

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89 out of 112 people found the following comment useful :-
24 hours of unadulterated rubbish., 11 March 2003
Author: doire from Stockholm, Sweden

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

***SPOILERS***SPOILERS***. Well, maybe not 24 hours, but certainly 22!. The series got off to an interesting start and the original format was novel and intriguing. After that it was all a rollercoaster downhill, an overblown exercise in audience manipulation, a violent and unbelievable fantasy masquerading as an abnormal day in the life of Jack Bauer and his abnormally dumb family. With so little space to comment, perhaps I should concentrate a little on these two dumbells. His poor daughter Kim, dumber than most, spends most of her time tied up (like Mummy!). Kim, daughter of Special Agent Bauer, sees the "good side" in one of her cruel abductees and as the series progresses, illicits his aid in helping her and mummy escape from a band of psycopathic killers who are intent on killing her Daddy and Senator David Palmer. In fact, intent on killing the entire Bauer family. Now, not only has this guy actively participated in her kidnapping, but his associate in this abduction savagely assaults Kim´s girlfriend and leaves her for dead on the street, an event witnessed by Kim herself. Is it plausible that Kim could feel anything for this guy after this other than absolute fear and loathing?. Anyway, she empathises with him, seeing that he is merely a scapegoat in the wider scheme of things - he was only responsible for kidnapping her, not involved in any way in the conspiracy to murder her Daddy. Right oh!. Kim escapes twice and is captured twice. Mummy escapes on several occasions herself and at one stage undergoes the trauma of amnesia after she has stupdly parked her car on the edge of a cliff-face (with Kim in it) and goes back on the main road to see if they have managed to shake off the killer in the car who has been pursuing them. They were safe and sound at this stage. But Mummy must have forgot to put the brakes on or something...car goes over cliff, Mummy´s grief brings on amnesia...and the silliness goes on forever.

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88 out of 112 people found the following comment useful :-
SuperSize Me- Junk TV, 2 September 2004
Author: dutchwife from Osaka Japan

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

(Slight spoiler contained, but if you get far enough into the second series for it to affect you, I doubt you'll be reading this).

Don't watch this. It's MacDonald's TV, no nutritional value whatsoever. My wife rented this & it's been constantly playing as I type. Xander Berkeley seemed to be the only character with whom one might empathize & he just died. This series has had me finding excuses to step out every night- simply being in the room when it's playing is migraine inducing.

Hateful, cynical, despicable; not the players- the producers etc who foist this junk on an ever-eager public. Avoid it at all costs.

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