24: Legacy

The pace is fast and furious, as usual. It’s just happening this time without Jack Bauer.

Odds are that for most who have fond memories of the show, the good will outweigh the bad. But there’s no doubt that for others, the scale will differ.

Hawkins does a solid job filling Jack’s familiar shoes.

Lean in, don't over think it, and go along for the hectic ride. [13-26 Feb 2017, p.19]

It's action escapism, not homework, and with Hawkins as a sturdy lead and a string of chases, gunfights and a couple of decent stunts, 24: Legacy mostly does its job.

Newcomers to the franchise--there may be a quite a few, as 24: Legacy gets the prime spot right after the Super Bowl--may get sucked in, mostly thanks to Hawkins' charisma, although Miranda Otto is also very watchable as Rebecca Ingram, the tough CTU director who is leaving the agency to help her husband, played by Jimmy Smits, run for president.

Great cast, and Hawkins is a worthy Jack Bauer successor. But Legacy can be lethargic and loquacious. More action, less talk, will hopefully close out this day.

These days, it’s hard to be too certain about anything, but 24 is reassuringly still the series it always has been.

It remains to be seen whether Eric Carter will deepen as the series goes along; for now, though, Hawkins, like 24: Legacy itself, brings just enough intensity to get the heart-pounding job done.

The opening real-time hour is pretty engaging--knottily plotted yet streamlined enough to hold the attention of football fans left burping on sofas across this great land on Sunday. ...But after a few hours of 24: Legacy, I wasn’t very engaged by all the scrambling around, the twists that prove to be double-crosses that will probably turn out to be triple-crosses.

It’s all very breathless, as it should be, and Carter scores points by weaponizing a rather large object at the first episode’s end. But the original “24” was character-driven to a large extent by Keifer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer and elevated even further when Mary Lynn Rajskub’s Chloe O’Brian came along. No such fire or chemistry is evident here.

The 24 franchise still takes itself very seriously and perhaps will somehow sort things out from a basic believability standpoint as time marches on. But in the first four hours, it’s too often 24: Cuckoo Clock.

What 24: Legacy lacks in nail-biting excitement, it makes up for in head-spinning politics. For all the fears of a looming Muslim attack on American soil that 24: Legacy fans, its values are not entirely predictable.

Usually “24” descends into silliness in its final third act, and by that time, it has built up a reservoir of goodwill so viewers are determined to finish the day. Not so much with this one.

Mr. Smits, like Mr. Hawkins, gets off to a slow start, but, by the fourth hour, is becoming interesting. So aside from Jack Bauer, all of the standard “24” elements are in place, including the big-budget look.

Seeing Jack go through the old motions in 2014 revival season Live Another Day had a certain nostalgic appeal, but without him Legacy is mostly just a pointless retread.

At 12 episodes instead of 24, Legacy may be able to avoid some of the more absurd detours that plagued the original, but the formula remains the same: Technology is great, but human ingenuity tops it every time.

It seemed new and different 16 years ago. Today ... it sort of feels like more of the same. Even without Jack Bauer.

Yes, there’s still time for it to turn things around and there’s no denying that this pilot is a decent enough start, but by bringing little in the way of new or original material to the table, Fox may struggle to keep viewers around for the long haul, especially seasoned fans who are used to so much better.

The series continues to exploit hot-button issues for pulse-pounding fantasy--albeit in a manner that, when contrasted to the more modern (if equally silly) Homeland, comes across as clunky and outdated.

Hawkins is a compelling presence, and his handling of the show’s signature action sequences suggests an actor who can carry a show. But as a character, Eric Carter is a bit of a dud, with a snooze of a backstory that does little to enliven him.

This sometimes talky and often preposterous Legacy effort has all of the annoying flaws of Kiefer Sutherland's long-running "24" and none of its considerable strengths.

Corey Hawkins does a perfectly serviceable job in the thankless role of playing the new Jack, as do the other leads Jimmy Smits and Miranda Otto. But you'll have more fun rewatching your season one DVD.

It’s unfortunate that four episodes in, Hawkins never gets to demonstrate much in the way of character development; as a new hero, he’s mostly saddled with replicating Jack Bauer’s forward momentum, with no time for us to get inside his head. In fact, that lack of imagination and depth is what mars 24: Legacy.

24: Legacy takes all those basics and executes them with rote diligence, without adding anything in the way of inspiration or relevance (unless you count the occasional appearance of drones). Many of the elements added or altered in this incarnation of the franchise are forgettable at best and questionable at worst.

If you’re going to watch this series, give Hawkins a chance. It’s not his fault that 24: Legacy Coto and Katz have pretty much handed him Jack Bauer’s broken-down, sweaty and funky shoes and asked him to run a marathon in them. ... The element of 24: Legacy that feels especially tedious, though, is its return to the well of radical Islamic terrorism.

Thanks almost single-handedly to Kirk's performance it's modestly watchable, and there's a touch of "RoboCop" in the premise of a private entity taking control of an ailing police force. Yet even seen through that sci-fi lens, "APB" looks less far-fetched than "24."

The dialogue is awful, the performances are generally bad (with the exception of the vets—Otto, Smits, and Gerald McRaney, who pops up in episode two), and even the internal logic of the show feels non-existent.

This material has seen better days, and 24: Legacy makes clearer than ever how much Kiefer Sutherland was needed to sell it.

If the story was half as compelling as an average “Homeland” season, perhaps audiences could overlook the political commentary. But there’s little urgency driving the conventional TV action, and its stars’ personalities are largely drowned out by exposition.

Unfortunately, in classic bad-form 24 fashion, egregious stereotypes and caricatures abound. [Feb 3/10 2017, p.99]