William Devane

Imagine, if you will, a horse race that starts and finishes in a blink of an eye. We see your choice winner bucking behind the starting gate. His chances of winning are slim to none, fifty to one in fact. You may not know anything about the horse, but you like the sound of his name on the program, and figure you can make some nice cash from a long shot. The gate opens and your horse bellows out the door. Immediately cut to the first bend and he is trailing behind the team.

There is more than a scent of resigned doddering in this week’s outing. Jack’s mission is fairly rote: he needs to get Heller out of the presidential enclave without anyone knowing. But it accounts for much of the running time. He forms an uneasy alliance with Mark, who keeps almost everyone else in the administration occupied while Jack and Heller make a beeline for the rendezvous with Margot.

And so it is that one of 24’s top love stories enters a new chapter. Jack and Audrey have an incredible history together, even by Jack’s standards. He killed her ex-husband, for heaven’s sake. They haven’t seen each other for years, and now they cross paths once again, with Jack a suspected terrorist (which everyone with half a brain in this universe should know is hogwash) and Audrey firmly entrenched in her father’s administration. Before the star-crossed lovers finally reconvene, there is plenty of other business to get through, most of it related directly to the impending terror attacks.

“‘Frenzy’ and ‘Family Plot,’ admittedly slight works in Hitchcock’s career, are nevertheless valuable entries in the filmmaker’s cannon, with scenes, shots, and moments of unmistakably Hitchcockian bravura”