Wait is over for ‘24’

Filling the screen with images reminiscent of “Hotel Rwanda” and “Blood Diamond” – and an even grimmer and sick-at-heart Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) – “24” prepares to retake its position on American television with “Redemption.”

The two-hour prequel to Season 7, which launches Jan. 11, airs tonight at 8 on Fox.

A victim of the writers strike, the show that tapped into America’s post-9/11 paranoia, and turned baby-faced Sutherland into the world’s most unlikely emo-action hero, has been gone for nearly 18 months – or several million episodes in “24’s” infamous real-time format.

Rest assured, no one has been idle. (Sutherland, for his part, kept the show in the headlines by getting arrested and serving time for drunken driving, though this was probably not the kind of talking point Fox was looking for.)

The forced hiatus was only one of “24’s” problems. As Season 6 pinballed to a close in spring 2007, even die-hard fans were complaining about repetitive story lines and worn-out love triangles.

“Redemption” nukes those criticisms from the very first scene. With a narrative that is ambitious and gut-wrenching even by “24” standards, Bauer (Sutherland) finds himself in Sangala, Africa, which is on the verge of a military coup of the sort now only too recognizable.

There is a psychotic general in a requisite psychotic-general beret, a brutal rebel army touting machine guns and machetes, and a group of now agonizingly iconic child soldiers: boys and young men kidnapped and psychologically bludgeoned to make them capable of slaughtering “the cockroaches.”

The world has changed in many ways since the end of Season 6, and executive producer Howard Gordon seems to have taken to heart the criticism the U.S. government has received over the use of torture.

This doesn’t mean there are no scenes of torture. Of course there are; it’s “24.” It’s just not the Americans who are committing it.

The Counter Terrorist Unit has, in fact, been disbanded and is under investigation. While his perpetual emotional turmoil does not seem to include regret over using excessive force, Jack has fled the United States in an effort to evade a subpoena.

It catches up with him in mythical Sangala, where he is doing quasi-missionary work with his old special ops buddy Carl (Robert Carlyle), who runs a school for boys.

All you have to do is take one look at Carl’s group of winsome young students to know what is going to happen next: The soldiers will come for them and only Jack can prevent their being dragged into military slavery.

Meanwhile – and haven’t you missed all those split-screen meanwhiles? – back in the States, a senator so vile he is played by Jon Voight is funding the rebels.

When the young, drug-addicted financial lackey who’s been moving the money realizes what’s going on, he panics and turns to his best friend. Who happens to be the son of Allison Taylor (Cherry Jones), the first female president-elect just moments away from her inauguration.

Outgoing president Noah Daniels (Powers Boothe), who apparently served out the term he began in Season 6, has been informed of the impending coup, but rather than offer military support he is closing the embassy and evacuating any Americans.

Which means Jack and Carl have only an hour to get the kids through rebel-controlled territory to the U.S. Embassy, the last place Jack wants to be.

There’s nothing like a group of round-faced young boys running for their lives through field and forest to instantly ratchet up a story’s emotional level, not to mention the gasp factor of machete use.

The seventh season may take place back in the States, but this prequel firmly establishes not only what is at stake here – the desperate lives of innocent men, women and children – but also the moral responsibility the United States continues to have in the world.

Still, for all its political ambitions, “24” remains the story of one man’s journey, and Sutherland shrugs himself back into the role as if it were a well-worn flak jacket.

With his eyes full of anguish, soft-spoken ways and chin stubble gone golden under the African sun, Bauer has never looked so savior-like. (At one point he is tortured with his arms outstretched, as if on a cross, which may have been a bit over-the-top.)

He is still more than capable of taking out an entire platoon with a few sticks of dynamite and a handgun, but clearly Jack Bauer walks the Earth to take on the world’s sins, to thwart what he can, avenge what he cannot and suffer because he must.