The extraordinary rendition row has not dulled Jack Bauer’s enthusiasm for torture in 24.
By howard rosenberg in LA
Saving America from terrorists can be a grimy business, but someone has to do it. Take Jack Bauer, the whispery action figure played by Kiefer Sutherland on 24, a goofy series now entering its fifth season.
While Americans and much of the globe debate the explosive issue of prisoner torture, Jack quizzes detainees the old-fashioned way - punching them out, breaking their bones, even plugging them to loosen their tongues - while viewers on both sides of the Atlantic root him on.
Each hour of the series triggers the next in a 24-hour cycle of pandemonium testing the mettle of a high-tech government counter-terrorist unit known as CTU. 24's stunningly lunatic scripts are great trash, uniting aspirations of grandeur with ferocious banality in a bizarro realm where usual
