Kiefer Sutherland's 10 Best Movies And TV Shows

Some huge fan favorites from the 1980s and 1990s, as well as one of the biggest spy shows in television history, are among the best Kiefer Sutherland films and shows. Sutherland became famous in the 1980s for his role in the infamous Brat Pack, which featured Demi Moore, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, and others. As a result, he got big roles in a number of young adult films of the time, including Stand by Me, The Lost Boys, Young Guns, and Flatliners. However, Sutherland began acting in more serious roles shortly after.

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. 1993's The Vanishing

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.
The movie stays pretty much the same for the most part, but Sluizer makes a big change at the end to make it more satisfying for the American 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. Nevertheless, until the changes at the end, the film retains the original sense of dread and gloom.

9. Flatliners (1990)

Joel Schumacher had previously collaborated with Kiefer Sutherland on a role 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. William Baldwin, Julia Roberts, and Kevin Bacon play his friends who get involved. 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)

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.

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.

7. Young Guns (1988)

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.

The film Young Guns did well at the box office and was praised by critics for its historical accuracy in portraying 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.

6. 1998's Dark City

(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's style and visual design were praised by critics, who gave it mostly positive reviews.

5. Designated Survivor (2016-2019)

After the huge success of 24, Kiefer Sutherland returned to television in 2016 for the political thriller drama Designated Survivor. The United States is targeted by terrorists in this series. 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. Thomas Kirkman is from the United States. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, played here by Sutherland.

The series ran for three seasons and 53 episodes, premiering on ABC. Netflix took over the show after ABC pulled the plug after two seasons and aired a third. 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.

4. 1996's A Time to Kill

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).

3. Stand By Me (1986)

Stand By Me is one of the best non-horror films ever made based on Stephen King's works, having been released in 1986. 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. Ace Merrill, the bully, is played by Kiefer Sutherland in an extremely threatening and frightful performance. However, his threat is always on the mind as the boys set out for an adventure that changes their lives.

Ace Merrill appears in Stand By Me's adaptation of The Body, Needful Things, Nana, and the Hulu series Castle Rock as a recurring character. Sutherland's portrayal was the first in movies or on TV for the character.

2. A Few Good Men (1992)

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. Daniel Kaffee, played by Tom Cruise, is a young military JAG attorney who is assigned to represent two soldiers who are accused of killing a US Marine at Guantánamo Bay. They decide not to take a plea deal and pursue a high-ranking colonel (Jack Nicholson) because another JAG attorney, Demi Moore, believes there is more to the murder. First Lieutenant Jonathan James Kendrick, played by Kiefer Sutherland, was the commanding officer who issued the "Code Red" order that led to the Marine's death. The film grossed $243.2 million on a $33 million budget, making it one of Sutherland's biggest successes ever.

1. 24 (2001-2010)

The one role that defined Kiefer Sutherland's career came on television when he played Jack Bauer in the espionage thriller series 24. At first, the show was just 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. As a result, there was a running clock that was a must-see on television. Each season, Jack Bauer, a federal counterterrorist agent, must stop a terrorist act. With over 200 episodes and nine seasons, the show was a huge hit. The first five seasons were all praised by critics, who described them as groundbreaking and innovative. 24 received 72 Primetime Emmy nominations and won several, including one for Kiefer Sutherland in 2006. Sutherland also received a lot of praise, with critics saying that his excellent performance made him indispensable to the show. In 2001, Sutherland was also honored with a Golden Globe, and the show was named Best Drama Series in 2003.