Who is Kiefer Sutherland

24 - Season 1: 24, as surely everyone knows by now, is a thriller that takes places over 24 hours, midnight to midnight, in 24 one-hour episodes. Everything takes place in real time, which means no flashbacks, no flash-forwards, no handy time-dissolves. Every strand of the plot has to be dovetailed and interlocked so things happen just when they should, in the right amount of time. Federal agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) runs around L.A. trying to stall an assassination attempt on an African American presidential candidate and rescue his wife and daughter from the clutches of the Balkan baddies. Twists, turns, revelations, and cliffhangers are tossed at us with satisfying regularity. It's not perfect: we get some hokey plot devices (instant amnesia, anybody?); the final twist makes no sense whatsoever; and as for Dennis Hopper's "Serbian" accent.... Even so, this is undeniably mold-breaking TV. Like Murder One and The Sopranos, 24 is one of those series that future TV thrillers will be measured against. -- Philip Kemp

24 - Season 2: Jack Bauer is having another one of his "very bad days" in the second season of the groundbreaking real-time thriller 24. Once again the hours are ticking by with more guaranteed cliffhangers than a convention of mountain climbers. Holed up in a Los Angeles condo and estranged from his daughter, Jack is no longer on the government payroll; unfortunately for him, this small fact doesn't seem to matter to President David Palmer and the NSA, who call him back in to the CTU and give him 24 hours to infiltrate a terrorist organization that is planning to detonate a dirty bomb in the city of angels. All Jack wants is to get his daughter out of the city, unfortunately Kim's new employer, the abusive father of the child she is nannying, has other ideas.

24 - Season 3: There's not one cougar to be found in 24's dynamic third season, and that's good news for everyone. After Jack Bauer's daughter Kim survived hokey hazards in season 2, she's now a full-time staffer at CTU, the L.A.-based intelligence beehive that's abuzz once again--three years after the events of "Day Two"--when a vengeful terrorist threatens to release a lethal virus that could wipe out much of the country's population. Jack attempts to broker a deal for the virus involving drug kingpin Ramon Salazar, whose operation Jack successfully infiltrated at high personal cost: to maintain his cover, he got hooked on heroin. That potentially deadly triangle--drug lords, addiction, and bioterrorism on a massive scale--sets the 24-hour clock ticking in a tight, action-packed plot involving a potential traitor in CTU's midst; the return of TV's greatest villainesses in Nina Meyers and former First Lady Sherry Palmer; a troubled romance between Kim and Jack's new partner Chase; and a scandalized reelection campaign by president David Palmer, who monitors CTU as they struggle to (literally) save the day.

24 - Season 4: The fourth season kicks off with a deadly terrorist strike resulting in the kidnapping of his new boss, the U.S. Secretary of Defense James Heller. Although a fired, ex-employee of the Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU), it is no surprise who is going to shift into full gear to bring the terrorists to justice. However, it doesn't take the super-agent long to discover the kidnapping of his boss is part of a much larger plan, master-minded by Habib Marvan the middle eastern terrorist cell leader the US government has been trying to track down for years. Considered by many to be the best season of the first four, 24 - Season 4 is a definite departure from the first three seasons; it's still amped up beyond anything else on TV, but compared to the previous seasons, 24 has gotten a lot smarter, and in turn, better. --Rob Bracco

24 - Season 5: Eighteen months after faking his own death, Jack Bauer is forced to return to Los Angeles when it becomes apparent that the only four people who know he is still alive are being systemically targeted for assassination. The assassinations coincide with the signing of an anti-terrorism treaty between Russia and the U.S., leading Jack to suspect a link between the assassinations, the treaty, and a group of Russian terrorists. But as events slowly unfold it becomes apparent that the day's horrific events were originally set in motion by someone within our country's own administration - an individual with the power and resources to thwart Jack's every move.

It's too bad Jack Bauer was busy solving an international terrorist crisis. As seen with unflinching eyes in this wickedly entertaining documentary, Kiefer Sutherland could have used the organizational powers of his 24-star alter-ego to help him with his duties as road manager of a burgeoning rock band.

Sutherland is exposed as steadfast devotee of Rocco DeLuca & The Burden as he tries his best to manage the details of the band's brief winter, 2005 tour of Europe. In addition to his career as a famous actor, Sutherland is also co-founder of the indie record label Ironworks Music, and as I Trust You to Kill Me proves, he's clearly the #1 fan of Ironworks' up-and-comers Rocco DeLuca & The Burden. The band's tour of small clubs took them to London, Dublin, Reykjavík, Berlin, and points in between.

Director Manu Boyer lets his camera linger over the best and worst of it all. Some of the worst is of Sutherland as he ineptly (but utterly sincerely) tries to pump the band up at every opportunity, whether it's doing radio promos, hauling heavy amps into a London nightclub in the freezing cold, or slyly handing out tickets in Dublin pubs and street corners for an undersold show. It's hilarious to see him simultaneously exploiting and enjoying his celebrity status with passersby--some of whom know who he is, others only vaguely realizing that they ought to know who he is. Director Boyer also does some nosy prodding into Sutherland's private life, especially after he's hefted a few pints (the clip of Sutherland taking a drunken running dive into the Christmas tree in a posh London hotel was brief a YouTube smash after the film first aired on VH-1). We see the crawling-up end of the rock 'n' roll lifestyle from Sutherland's point of view and from the band's. Though it's certainly not the best rock concert movie, there is some terrific footage of The Burden performing their bloozy brand of rock behind DeLuca's raw wail. In spite of Sutherland's "help," the band may have a good chance at gaining a following. I Trust You to Kill Me (the title of The Burden's first album) documents both a personal journey for Kiefer Sutherland and a glimpse at the hardscrabble of a band clawing their way up. On both counts it's great fun and a terrific piece of rock 'n' roll entertainment. -- Ted Fry

Kiefer Sutherland ("24") and Nastassja Kinski star in this stirring, gorgeous, epic film about the renowned painter Paul Gauguin. Dissatisfied with his work as a highly successful stockbroker in Paris, Gauguin gives up his lucrative job to further his self-taught painting skills. But as his dreams to revolutionize the art world lead him and his family into a downward spiral of financial ruin, Gauguin discovers that he must travel to a new, strange world in the South Seas to rekindle the passion to create his masterpieces.

EYE OF THE KILLER is one of those unexpected surprises you get when you see a movie on DVD you haven't heard of before. Kiefer Sutherland plays a cop who is heavy on booze and genuinely disinterested in his life. His ex-wife is sleeping with his boss, and he's become cynical about law enforcement. While buying a bottle of whiskey, a young kid comes in and snatches the booze, leading Kiefer on a footchase, and ultimately Kiefer falls through an opening in an abandoned warehouse and takes a pretty nasty fall. Later, the kid who stole the bottle is brutally murdered. It seems also that the fall may have awakened some kind of psychic ability in Sutherland, who can see the crimes happening, but not the killer, only the victim. Whose eyes is Kiefer looking through?
Sutherland, who is finally achieving just critical acclaim in his hit TV series 24, is very good in this movie. Henry Czerny as the psychic Harvey does well; Gary Hudson as Kiefer's boss is appropriately egocentric and a pain the (...); and Polly Walker as Vera, the psychic, does well. The movie maintains a tense pace and moody atmosphere, and there is an interesting twist at the end I didn't see coming. Also, I loved the music over the end credits---eerie and haunting.
A very solid film worth seeing. -- Michael Butts (Martinsburg, WV USA)