No one can stop Jack Bauer when TV’s greatest action hero is hellbent on racing the clock and saving the world on 24.

Not bloodthirsty terrorists. Not shady politicians. Not even a pesky cougar threatening his daughter in the woods.

But there was one formidable foe that even the great Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) couldn’t defeat last season: The Writers Guild of America.

Yes, the WGA is one sinister organization that bears watching in these perilous times.

When the writers’ went on strike last year for three months, only eight 24 episodes were in the can, not nearly enough for a full, nail-biting season fans have come to expect. So Fox pushed the show’s seventh season premiere back 18 excruciating months to January 2009.

Since Jack was going to be MIA for about the length of time it takes to elect a president in real life, the network worried -- and rightfully so -- that when he returned and started barking raspy orders and threats like only Jack can, viewers wouldn’t care anymore.

Enter 24: Redemption, a two-hour movie airing Sunday night (8 p.m., WFLX-Channel 29) that serves two functions: It re-introduces us to a softer, gentler Jack and jump-starts a series that was starting to feel a bit stale and one that is coming off its worst season ever.

The last time we saw Jack, he was standing on a cliff, holding a gun and blankly staring at the Pacific Ocean after enduring yet another very bad day that would’ve probably made most of us jump off said cliff.

Thankfully, Jack didn’t.

Sure, 24 has hit a few major speed bumps (how many times can you have a mole in CTU, for instance) and was starting to become as predictable as Monday following Sunday, but if movie producers successfully found a way to hit the reset button on such iconic film characters as James Bond and Batman, why can’t the same thing happen for Jack Bauer?

The first thing you’ll notice about Redemption is that it’s not set in Los Angeles, the only city the bad guys in 24’s universe ever really seem to care about blasting to smithereens.

The movie takes place in Sangala, a fictional, war-torn African country (the film was shot in South Africa and Washington, D.C.) where Jack is spending time with an old mentor (Trainspotting’s Robert Carlyle) and avoiding a subpoena from a Senate subcommittee that wants to question our intrepid hero about little nitpicky things like torture and illegal detention of prisoners.

“If they want me back in Washington,” Jack growls to his mentor, “they can come and get me.”

OK, some things never change. Jack still plays by his own rules and has major authority figure issues.

But who can blame the guy?

Despite laying his life on the line countless time for his country, Jack remains the Rodney Dangerfield of special agents -- he gets no respect on The Hill or anywhere else in the nation’s capital, for that matter. President Logan (the wonderful Gregory Itzin) even tried to have Jack killed, for crying out loud!

Although the globe-trotting agent has spent his time away from the U.S. trying to find peace, well, chaos, gunfire and explosions follow Jack like a long shadow.

In Redemption, Jack gets caught in the middle of a bloody coup led by a power-hungry general (Candyman’s Tony Todd) who’s kidnapping children and forcing them to join his rebel army. You know a general means business when he’s played by The Candyman.

The coup, of course, has U.S. ties in the person of Jonas Hodges (Jon Voight), a slimy sort whose black-ops company is providing the army’s cash and weapons.

No one plays a white-collar bad guy better than Voight. (See Mission: Impossible, Enemy of the State). Voight can make wearing a simple suit and tie look sinister. Having Voight and Todd in the same movie -- and series when 24 premieres Jan. 11 -- could make for some must-see viewing.

We also meet the new president-elect Allison Taylor (Tony winner Cherry Jones) who will clearly have a very nasty international crisis to deal with shortly after she’s sworn in as the nation’s first female commander-in-chief.

It all serves as a tasty appetizer to what 24 fans hope will become a juicy new season. The producers want Redemption to serve as bridge between seasons six and seven. The film does just that -- and does it well as it introduces a new villain, a new president and a refreshing new locale.

More important, it makes Jack Bauer matter again after such a long absence during which we saw the country’s mood shift dramatically as it elected its first African-American president. (Something the forward-thinking writers did on 24 did several seasons back.)

A more subdued Sutherland (he’s not in full kick-butt mode) remains sensational in a role he was born to play. The Emmy-winning actor can still say more with a blank stare or a one-word answer than he can with 10 pages of dialogue.

It’s T-minus 51 days until 24 returns.

Tick...tick...tick..