'24' returns with kinder, gentler Jack Bauer

The Fox action series "24" returns from an 18-month hiatus with a two-hour movie called "Redemption" at 7 p.m. Sunday on WFLD Channel 32, but it might better have been called "Atonement," if that title hadn't already been taken by a superior work of fiction.

It finds Kiefer Sutherland's ruthless anti-terrorism agent Jack Bauer not only paying directly for the various sins (such as torture, to name just one) he's committed in the past, but also developing a heart to go with his courage, cunning and guile - not unlike the Grinch.

Unfortunately, allow me to insist that heart is not what America looks to Jack Bauer for, not even at this time of year. Come January, when the series actually resumes with its seventh season, a kinder, gentler Jack Bauer revised for the Obama administration might well have TV viewers looking back nostalgically to the glory days of George W. Bush and missions accomplished, when gratuitous action in general and torture in particular were not only permitted, but actively encouraged - at Guantanamo Bay and on TV.

"Redemption" finds Jack in the fictional African country of Sungala, his latest stop in a world-spanning journey dodging a Senate subpoena stemming from the various legal shortcuts he's had to take in saving the world the previous six seasons. There, rebel forces are recruiting an army of boys, armed with rifles and machetes, to take power. Jack just happens to be staying with an old Special Forces colleague, played by Robert Carlyle, who like all old Special Forces officers has not just faded away, but has retired to run an orphanage for African boys, who of course are in danger of being "recruited" without a moment's notice.

Jack also runs afoul of a U.S. embassy staffer played by Gil Bellows, who pretty much underlines the meaning of the movie for anyone still unclear on the concept. "Why are you here?" he asks Jack. "To do penance for all your sins?"

"Whatever I've done, I've paid for it in full," Jack snarls, but writer Howard Gordon has other ideas, as he puts Jack through a series of herculean ordeals that leads him back toward the good ole U.S. of A. and that date with the Senate he's got to keep to actually jump-start the seventh season in January.

Yes, Jack, we've already seen the highly classified and top-secret Fox TV promotions, which pretty much render "Redemption" ancillary on arrival.

Anyway, Jack fights off a recruiting raid single-handedly with two handguns and three sticks of dynamite, only to be taken captive himself and, of course, tortured. When he frees himself by snapping the lead bad guy's neck in a particularly innovative fashion, the baddie's rebel-colonel brother vows vengeance - as if Jack didn't already have a target on his back trying to squire these kids to the U.S. embassy for sanctuary before it closes.

"Jack, don't let them take the kids," Carlyle's Carl insists. "Don't let them take the children."

At one point, Jack even shouts, "Everybody hold hands!" He's in the middle of a civil war, and a day-care field trip breaks out.

I'm not going to reveal the creaky plot device that forces Jack's hand in bringing the kids to America himself, except to say it's hokey in the extreme.

Notice anything missing, like not a single female character? That's because meanwhile, back home, Cherry Jones' President-elect Allison Taylor is preparing to take power from the previous President Powers Boothe. Yes, at long last a woman has actually been elected president on a TV show, rather than being promoted from vice president after a death or appointed as the only logical choice in outer space. President Boothe has something sneaky going on that prompts him to close that Sungalese embassy, and it probably involves Jon Voight's master-of-war weapons dealings, but I'm sure we'll find out all about it as it supplies the intrigue for the seventh season - after Jack gets done with his Senate grilling in January.

For now, however, "24: Redemption" has the feel of stuff they shot a year ago, before the writers' strike and Sutherland's drunk-driving jail stint derailed the series and prompted Fox executives to press reset on the seventh season. Even "24" loyalists don't need to worry about missing it if their TiVo malfunctions. Just be ready for the real series to resume in January - and hope that those snotty senators succeed in putting some of the vim, vigor and vinegar back in suddenly softhearted Jack Bauer.