(Warning this review contains spoilers)

Years ago, probably eight years ago, I found 24 for sale on eBay really cheap. I was quite enamored with getting TV boxsets for under £1 so I bought the first six seasons before I ever watched the show. I mean 24 was such a huge thing and it was definitely my genre, I was mystified back then as to why I had never seen it. I figured I would love it!

Fast forward to present day and I have just about managed to force myself to watch most of the first two seasons. I can’t quite bring myself to watch the rest of season two. I think I have 4 episodes left but I just really don’t care. It is unbelievably boring and ridiculous and I seriously hate Bauer’s daughter, but I digress I’m talking about the movie. I’m only saying about the TV show because when I put this movie on tonight, I was anticipating it being awful. I literally groaned out loud when it did the “the following takes place between … events occur in real time.”

Oh boy was I wrong. Oh was I wrong.

There was shouting at the TV. I have been known to do that before *cough* but it’s not something I do all the time – I have to be driven to it. I knew before I watched that Carl Benton (Robert Carlyle’s character) was going to die but I didn’t know how or when. So I was constantly jumping every time he was in danger, and I was practically chewing on my fingers because I was scared for those kids.

The anxiety was real. I think 24 would be much improved if they condensed each season into a movie. Although I don’t know if I would survive watching it. Anyway, leaving aside the incredible suspense how was it? Well there was obviously some setup being done for season seven, and as I don’t watch 24 I really didn’t care about anything except for the kids. So all the stuff in Washington was lost on me. I also found the ending kinda bittersweet because the kids made it – phew – but all those other desperate people were left behind, and all the kids already brainwashed into the army were suffering. So it didn’t exactly feel like much of a victory, especially because Carl was dead.

I hoped to see Carl being a badass because he was ex-special forces. However, his first encounter with bad guys was just the sound of gunshots – we didn’t see anything. The next ‘action’ scene for him, was him shooting rather uselessly at a helicopter. After that was his death scene. So unfortunately no cool scenes with him taking out bad guys, that honor was of course left for the hero – Jack Bauer. Couldn’t you have shared the limelight just once Jack? I wanted to see Carl being a hero.

So yeah the lack of Carl being a badass was disappointing. His screentime also wasn’t fantastic but then it wasn’t that bad either, and it was only an 80 minute movie. I think for Robert Carlyle fans I would recommend it (see opening gif for exhibit A) and yeah it’s a good suspense movie, so recommended on that basis as well. It was definitely a million times better than I thought it was going to be, it had to overcome a fair bit of negative expectations, so yeah not bad at all.