8.1 | / 10 |
Users | 4.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Live Another Day, set four years after Season 8, begins at 11:00 a.m. and finds fugitive Jack in London trying to stop an assassination attempt on President James Heller by terrorist Margot Al-Harazi. Later, Jack must prevent an old enemy and a Russian diplomat from sparking a war between the U.S. and China.
Starring: Kiefer Sutherland, Yvonne Strahovski, Tate Donovan, Mary Lynn Rajskub, William DevaneAction | 100% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Drama | Insignificant |
Mystery | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1
Spanish: DTS 5.1
Portuguese: Dolby Digital 5.1
English SDH, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Three-disc set (3 BDs)
Region free
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Lots of us like to complain about how we’ve experienced a so-called “day from hell,” assertions that usually revolve around a series of
inconveniences or minor catastrophes keeping us from achieving our appointed rounds. It’s a bit of rhetorical hyperbole, of course, but for
anyone wanting a peek at a real day from hell, look no further than one Jack Bauer. Jack, a top operative in a counter terrorism unit,
seems to only experience days from hell, at least given the evidence provided by the eight previous seasons of 24.
24
had the “luck” (a questionable term, considering the circumstances) to premiere only a few weeks after the devastating terrorist attacks of
September 11, 2001, and it therefore caught the paranoid zeitgeist of its times as few series before or since. The show’s then
innovative gimmick was that each season actually depicted one solitary day in the life of Bauer, told in real time one hour at a time (with
skips of
several minutes for commercials, and in this latest season one deliberate skip of several hours since Live Another Day only produced
twelve — instead of 24 — episodes to cover the one day time span. As with previous seasons of 24, the intrepid Bauer finds himself
confronted with a cascading series of crises, this time built around the simultaneous unfoldings of a Presidential trip to London as well as a
nefarious terrorist taking control of America’s ever increasing fleet of attack drones and a second terrorist plot which may lead to a
global nuclear holocaust. You think you’ve got problems, let alone occasional days from hell? To purloin a phrase, you don’t know
Jack.
For those wanting to catch up on the exploits of Jack, our reviews of previous seasons released on Blu-ray can be found here:
24: Season 7 Blu-ray review
24: Season 8 Blu-ray review
24: Live Another Day is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. Shot digitally with a variety of HD cameras, 24: Live Another Day boasts a very sleek, sharp and precise looking image. A lot of this season plays out in dimly lit environments, and is further tweaked with color grading at times, with a noticeable loss of fine detail resulting. Contrast is generally strong, though crush is apparent in the darkest sequences. There's a dusting of compression artifacts as well in some of the darkest moments. Outdoor locations provide great depth of field and when things are lit well and non-graded, colors are very accurate looking and nicely suffused. There are no stability issues and aside from the minor compression artifact issues, there's not much else here to stress over.
24: Live Another Day features an incredibly forceful and enjoyable DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix. From crowded street scenes to the impact of drones raining down on various sites worldwide, the soundtrack provides near constant immersion, fulsome LFE and excellent prioritization. Dialogue is cleanly and clearly presented, and there's abundant space in even the noisiest environments.
24: Live Another Day has a lot going for it, including a breathless pace, an exciting urban location and enough dastardly doings to keep Jack Bauer occupied for maybe even more than one day. But there's also a somewhat tired, "been there, seen that" quality to this season (it's getting to the point where if there's not a plot to assassinate the president, Jack is pretty much useless). Sutherland continues to do fine work here, and the supporting cast (some returning, some new) are uniformly excellent, but this season, while still exciting, is a bit predictable quite a bit of the time. Technical merits here are generally strong, and 24: Live Another Day comes Recommended.
2008
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