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The best Kiefer Sutherland movies and TV shows include some huge fan favorites from the ’80s and ’90s and one of the biggest spy shows in television history. In the 1980s, Sutherland rose to fame thanks to his part in the infamous Brat Pack with names like Demi Moore, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, and more. This led him to get big roles in several young adult movies of the era, from Stand by Me and The Lost Boys to Young Gunsand Flatliners. However, soon, Sutherland began to move into more serious roles.
The second-generation star, whose father is the legendary Donald Sutherland, appeared in movies as varied as the sci-fi cult classic Dark City to the critically acclaimed military thriller A Few Good Men. However, these days, Kiefer is best known for his roles on television. He was one of the biggest TV stars in the world when he took on the role of Jack Bauer in 24 and then had the lead role in the legal thriller Designated Survivor. Sutherland has won two Primetime Emmys and a Golden Globes Award for his work on 24.
10
The Vanishing (1993)
Jeff Harriman
The Vanishing
- Release Date
-
February 5, 1993
- Runtime
-
109 Minutes
- Director
-
George Sluizer
-
-
Kiefer Sutherland
Jeff Harriman
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-
In 1988, George Sluizer directed the psychological thriller The Vanishing, a Dutch language film about a young man on a holiday trip whose partner disappears, only for a mysterious man to invite him to learn what happened to her. In 1993, Sluizer remade his own film as an American production and cast Kiefer Sutherland as the young man on the road trip opposite Jeff Bridges as the man who torments him after his girlfriend (a young Sandra Bullock) disappears without a trace.
Much of the movie is the same, but Sluizer makes an important change at the end of this one to make it a more satisfying ending for the American movie audience. It is the comparisons to the original ending, with the happy conclusion replacing the tragic one, that caused many critics to dismiss the Sutherland movie, giving it a 49% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. However, the film still maintains the same sense of dread and foreboding of the original until the changes at the end.
9
Flatliners (1990)
Nelson Wright
Flatliners
- Release Date
-
August 10, 1990
- Runtime
-
115 Minutes
- Director
-
Joel Schumacher
Kiefer Sutherland had already worked with Joel Schumacher once before when he appeared as a villain in The Lost Boys. In 1990, he starred as Nelson Wright, a medical student who wants to know what lies beyond death and believes he found a way to stop someone’s heart and then have people there to revive him after a certain amount of time. He gets friends involved, played by Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon, and William Baldwin.
After three of them “flatline” and all have visions from beyond, they begin to hallucinate and realize they might have brought something back with them. The film received mixed reviews, with an even 50% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. However, Flatliners remains a cult classic all these years later and even got a sequel in 2017 with the same name. Sutherland returned for the sequel as Barry Wolfson, but there was a deleted scene that reveals he was Nelson living under an assumed name.
8
The Lost Boys (1987)
David Powers
The Lost Boys
8/10
- Release Date
-
July 31, 1987
- Runtime
-
97 minutes
- Director
-
Joel Schumacher
- Writers
-
James Jeremias, Jan Fischer, Jeffrey Boam
- Sequel(s)
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Lost Boys 2
The Lost Boys is a movie that lives on as a cult favorite almost four decades after its release. Directed by Joel Schumacher, the film tells the story of a woman and her two sons after they moved to Santa Clara, California, to live with their grandfather after a divorce. However, the boys soon learn there are vampires in the town. Kiefer Sutherland is one of the vampires, David, the leader of a gang of vamps who hang out on the pier and soon turns older brother Michael into a vampire as well.
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The Lost Boys Cast & Character Guide
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It is up to Michael’s younger brother Sam (Corey Haim) to put a stop to the vampire coven with his new friends, the Frog Brothers. Film critics gave the movie decent reviews, although it negatively compared to another more serious vampire movie that came out the same year in Near Dark. As for The Lost Boys, it was a decent box office success and remains a cult classic, spawning a sequel 21 years later and another in 2010.
7
Young Guns (1988)
Doc Scurlock
Young Guns
- Release Date
-
August 12, 1988
- Runtime
-
107 Minutes
- Director
-
Christopher Cain
In 1988, Kiefer Sutherland joined fellow Brat Pack members Emilio Estevez, Charlie Sheen, and Lou Diamond Phillips in the Western film Young Guns. In this film, the Brat Packers played legendary Wild West outlaws, with Estevez in the lead as Billy the Kid. Sutherland played Doc Scurlock and Phillips played Jose Chavez y Chavez. That first film saw the outlaws team up for the first time while trying to seek revenge on the man who had their cattleman boss (Terence Stamp) murdered.
Young Guns was a decent box office success, and critics praised the film for its historical accuracy in depicting Billy the Kid. While it received negative reviews, it remained a beloved Western of its time, mostly counted off for the fact that the young actors didn’t fit the roles as well as Western aficionados might have liked. However, Estevez, Sutherland, and Phillips remained popular with the film’s fans, and a sequel arrived in 1990, with all three actors returning for the roles.
6
Dark City (1998)
Dr. Daniel P. Schreber
Dark City
- Release Date
-
February 27, 1998
- Runtime
-
100 minutes
- Director
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Alex Proyas
Directed by Alex Proyas (The Crow), Dark City is a tech-noir film taking place in a dystopian future. In the film, John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) is a man who wakes up with amnesia and has to go on the run from people who are trying to capture him (the Strangers). The only thing he knows is what a man named Dr. Daniel Schreber tells him, all while a local police inspector is investigating the murder of sex workers, with Murdoch as the main suspect.
Sutherland plays Dr. Schreber and the film is both sci-fi and fantastical in nature, with The Twilight Zone as an influence, but the noir genre design is used to tell the story. The film received mostly positive reviews, with critics praising the style and visual design of the film. Roger Ebert even compared it to 2001: A Space Odyssey and Metropolis. Dark City won the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film and the Bram Stoker Award for Best Screenplay.
5
Designated Survivor (2016-2019)
President Thomas Kirkman
Designated Survivor
- Release Date
-
2016 – 2018
- Directors
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Kiefer Sutherland
After the huge success of 24, Kiefer Sutherland returned to television in 2016 for the political thriller drama Designated Survivor. In this series, a terrorist attack kills the U.S. President and everyone in his line of succession. This leads to the “designated survivor” — the one person not with the rest of the politicians who takes over as President if everyone else dies. That is Thomas Kirkman, the U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, played here by Sutherland.
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While Designated Survivor may not have had the kind of Netflix success that many were hoping for, the show was strong, even during its pilot.
The series ran for three seasons and 53 episodes, premiering on ABC. When ABC canceled the series after two seasons, Netflix picked it up and ran it for one more final season. The series was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Action/Thriller Television Series and won the Critics’ Choice Television Award for Most Exciting New Series for its premiere season. The show was so popular that South Korea ordered a remake called Designated Survivor: 60 Days, which ran for one season.
4
A Time To Kill (1996)
Freddie Lee Cobb
A Time to Kill
- Release Date
-
July 24, 1996
- Runtime
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149 minutes
- Director
-
Joel Schumacher
- Writers
-
John Grisham, Akiva Goldsman
A Time to Kill was John Grisham’s debut novel, and it made him an instant bestseller, a moment that led to his career in writing legal thrillers. In 1996, Joel Schumacher directed the adaptation of the story with Matthew McConaughey in the lead role of Jake Brigance, an attorney representing Carl Lee Hailey (Samuel L. Jackson), a man on trial for murdering the men who raped his young daughter. This case then caused the Ku Klux Klan to roar into town, protesting the idea of a Black man getting off for killing a white man.
Kiefer Sutherland, who had worked with Schumacher on The Lost Boys and Flatliners, took on his more evil role — that of Freddie Lee Cobb, the brother of one of the white supremacists who abused the little girl. He is also the man who brought in the Klan and began to torment Jake and his legal assistant, Ellen Roark (Sandra Bullock). Critics awarded A Time to Kill a 67% fresh rating while Jackson earned a Golden Globe nomination and the film won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Motion Picture.
3
Stand By Me (1986)
John “Ace” Merrill
Stand By Me
10/10
- Release Date
-
November 26, 1986
- Runtime
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89 minutes
- Director
-
Rob Reiner
Released in 1986, Stand By Me is one of the best non-horror movies ever made based on the stories of Stephen King. The story follows a group of four boys who heard there is a dead body somewhere in the country, and they set out to find it. However, before they head out, a local bully threatens to kill them if they do. That bully is Ace Merrill, and Kiefer Sutherland plays him in a very menacing and frightening performance. However, his threat is always on the mind as the boys set out for an adventure that changes their lives.
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Ace Merrill is a recurring character in Stephen King’s stories, appearing in The Body (which Stand By Me adapts), Needful Things, Nana, and the Hulu series Castle Rock. Sutherland’s portrayal was the first in movies or on TV for the character. Directed by Rob Reiner, Stand By Me received rave reviews, with a 92% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Most praise went to the young starring cast, which included Corey Feldman, Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, and Jerry O’Connell.
2
A Few Good Men (1992)
Lieutenant Johnathan James Kendrick
A Few Good Men
- Release Date
-
December 11, 1992
- Runtime
-
138 minutes
- Director
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Rob Reiner
After impressing Rob Reiner in his small role in Stand By Me, Kiefer Sutherland re-teamed with the director in the legal drama A Few Good Men in 1992. In this film, a young military JAG attorney named Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise) is assigned to represent two soldiers accused of murdering a United States Marine at Guantánamo Bay. When another JAG attorney (Demi Moore) believes there is more behind the murder, they choose not to plea bargain and go after a top colonel (Jack Nicholson).
Kiefer Sutherland plays First Lieutenant Jonathan James Kendrick, the commanding officer who gave the “Code Red” order that resulted in the Marine’s murder. The film was a massive success, one of the biggest of Sutherland’s career, making $243.2 million on a $33 million budget. It also received four Oscar nominations, including one for Nicholson’s performance and one for Best Picture. It also ranks as the fifth-best Courtroom Drama Film on the AFI’s Top 10 list.
1
24 (2001-2010)
Jack Bauer
24
8/10
- Release Date
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2001 – 2013
- Showrunner
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Robert Cochran
- Directors
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Robert Cochran
The one role that defined Kiefer Sutherland’s career came on television when he played Jack Bauer in the espionage thriller series 24. The series was, at first, a curiosity. Every episode took place in live time, so one minute of the screen time was one minute of the story’s time. There were also no breaks, so the full season was 24 hours of television time and 24 hours of in-world time. This created a ticking clock that made for must-see television. Jack Bauer is a counter-terrorist federal agent who has to stop a terrorist act each season.
The series was a huge success, with nine seasons and over 200 episodes. The first five seasons all received critical praise, with critics calling it innovative and groundbreaking. Kiefer Sutherland also received heaps of acclaim, with critics saying he was indispensable to the show thanks to his great performance. 24 received 72 Primetime Emmy nominations, winning several, including Sutherland taking home an award in 2006. Sutherland also won a Golden Globe in 2001, while the show won Best Drama Series in 2003.
