Published Jul 15, 2026, 7:24 PM EDT
Thomas Butt is a senior writer. An avid film connoisseur, Thomas actively logs his film consumption on Letterboxd and vows to connect with many more cinephiles through the platform. He is immensely passionate about the work of Martin Scorsese, John Ford, and Albert Brooks. His work can be read on Collider and Taste of Cinema. He also writes for his own blog, The Empty Theater, on Substack. He is also a big fan of courtroom dramas and DVD commentary tracks. For Thomas, movie theaters are a second home. A native of Wakefield, MA, he is often found scrolling through the scheduled programming on Turner Classic Movies and making more room for his physical media collection. Thomas habitually increases his watchlist and jumps down a YouTube rabbit hole of archived interviews with directors and actors. He is inspired to write about film to uphold the medium’s artistic value and to express his undying love for the art form. Thomas looks to cinema as an outlet to better understand the world, human emotions, and himself.
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25 years since its release and over 15 years since its finale, ***24 ***is undoubtedly a product of the 2000s. Airing less than two months after the September 11th attacks, Fox’s crime/political thriller serendipitously captured the hearts and minds of Americans, reeling from the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center, looking for justice and retribution. The series echoed the sentiments of America constantly being under attack by international terrorists, particularly ones hailing from the Middle East, and the acceptance of federal authorities deploying any means necessary to protect the United States, feelings that have caused *24 *to age like milk. Scoff at its jingoism and portrayals of Middle Eastern terrorists that have since drawn criticism, but contemporary audiences can’t ignore just how revolutionary the series’ narrative structure was upon airing. Before The Pitt, *24 *captured an entire action-packed day’s worth for agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland), with relentless energy that laid the groundwork for today’s subgenre of anxiety-inducing episodic TV.
When 24’s pilot episode, “12:00 a.m.-1:00 a.m.”, began with Jack Bauer, expert federal agent and head of Los Angeles’ Counterterrorist Unit (CTU) and the series’ overarching protagonist, announcing that “events occur in real time,” audiences knew something new was in the air. For eight full seasons and a shortened revival season in 2014, the action/thriller/espionage series stuck to its mission statement, providing one whole day as Jack and his team protect the United States from terrorist threats, including Presidential assassinations, nuclear bombs, deadly viruses, and more. These eight seasons, or days, in *24 *parlance, would be Jack’s most harrowing nightmares, as he undergoes a non-stop sprint to apprehend conspirators and interrogate them, follow leads, and make drastic decisions that blur the line between good and evil.
Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.
Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.
Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.
Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.
Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.
Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.
The ticking clock, used to transition between commercial breaks and signal an episode’s end, is the heartbeat of 24. There is only so much time until a bomb detonates or a witness is conscious enough to talk, and you are thrown right in the middle of the chaos. In a pre-24 world, it was implied that shows would jump through time and disregard strict continuity, but this series, created by **Joel Surnow **and Robert Cochran, captured the exhaustion of a long workday and the stamina required to make life-or-death decisions. Jack, already a cutthroat field agent, grows increasingly impatient and resorts to torturous interrogation and rogue tactics to get what he wants. The real-time gimmick’s most vital contribution was its capability to imply that the uneventful, “slow” parts of the day occur during the commercial breaks, as well as being used to build suspense. Perhaps commercial breaks were when Jack finally went to the restroom, an unanswered question that came with any *24 *discussion.
Throughout each day of 24’s run, from 2001 to 2010, viewers were given the illusion that they were flipping channels between simultaneous crises, usually between a national security threat and palace intrigue in the offices of the POTUS, with the show’s signature Chief of Staff being David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert). Each day also saw additional turmoil inside CTU’s office, strains primarily caused by Jack defying orders from superiors and terrorist moles infiltrating the building, a recurring story beat that tests the limits of the audience’s credulity.
Also starring Mary-Lynn Rajskub, Carlos Bernard, and Elisha Cuthbert, *24 *is still a worthwhile series that endures because of its brilliance as a propulsive action-thriller. Even the most skeptical viewers will be gripping the edge of their seats during every shootout, rescue, and mission that’s a race against the clock. Jack Bauer appears to be invincible through most of 24, but time is the one thing he can’t outmatch, no matter how loudly he yells, “dammit!”
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2001 - 2014-00-00