How much true crime is on Donald Sutherland's c.v.?
the true crime that's worth your time
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When the great Donald Sutherland passed away last week, I got some very surprising (and displeasing) news from Bluesky, to wit: Sutherland never got nominated for an Oscar. Not "never won"; never even nominated, despite a six-decade career with a number of acknowledged classics…including JFK, which, yes, is on the one hand deranged but on the other still extremely watchable, and part of that is the sober believability of Sutherland's X.
The paucity of awards on his résumé generally made it hard for me to guess what Sutherland's Best Evidence True-Crime Résumé Percentage specifically might look like, especially given the even two hundred listings on his IMDb page. As I always do, I guessed a number before combing through the "subject"'s c.v., and my guess, pre-process, was 9 percent.
I hadn't even gotten into the 1970s before I started feeling like I'd wildly overbid; let's get into it and find out how badly/in which direction I missed!
ITV Play of the Week S10.E43, "The Death of Bessie Smith" (1965) // Written by Edward Albee as a stage play; the teleplay also posits that Smith didn't have to die of her injuries in a car crash, had she not been refused admittance to a whites-only hospital. This theory was later debunked in a biography of Smith, but this is close enough to a true-crime story based on the information available in the sixties that I'll award Sutherland's "Intern": 1
It's tempting to award a point for his guest shot on The Sullavan Brothers (1965), because the show seemed like an explainer of thinly veiled real cases, but I can't quite get there; 0
BBC Play of the Month S01.E06, "Lee Oswald: Assassin" (1966) // Good enough for government work, as they say: 1
The Dirty Dozen (1967) // Apparently based on a real band of "rebellious" brothers known IRL as the Filthy 13; sure, why not: 1
Alien Thunder (ska Dan Candy's Law) (1974) // About the legendary Cree fugitive Almighty Voice. Related: Sutherland's body of work will take you on quite a journey through Commonwealth folktales: 1
The (First) Great Train Robbery (1978) // Michael Crichton won an Edgar; nothing for Sutherland, and there are enough similarly named properties that some of them may have nothing to do with IRL train heists, great or otherwise, but I choose to believe: 1
Murder by Decree (1979) // A weird one for sure: a real case (Jack the Ripper) tackled by a fictional detective (Sherlock Holmes). Sutherland plays a psychic, Robert Lees, who did exist and did "assist" the investigation, and while this may not qualify him as a "name figure," I knew who it was and I'm not really a case-head. MbD has gotten a bit of notice on socials since Sutherland's passing, but I wouldn't call it a genre classic: 3
A War Story (1981) // When it comes to war stories, it's always a judgment call – is it a "war is hell" story, is it a "war crimes" story, etc. This one's about WWII internment camps and prisoner-worker abuse, which I think qualifies it, although Sutherland is only narrating here: 1
Apprentice to Murder (1988) // Ostensibly based on the "Hex Hollow" case, which itself is an all-time case name, right?: 1
What to do with A Dry White Season (1989)? // It's based on real events; apartheid is reasonably considered criminal; some would deem this a classic/hall-of-fame movie. Marlon Brando got all the awards attention, but it did keep coming up on Bluesky last week in connection to Sutherland's performance…I don't know, it's not the strongest justification but: 1
Eminent Domain (1990) // Sutherland plays one half of a real Polish couple who fell afoul of the country's Politburo: 1
JFK (1991) // He's a huge reason the film has any credibility at all, but his screentime is brief and his character is not a real person (probably; you can make your arguments in the comments). Still, it's a HOFer, and that gets him: 2
Six Degrees of Separation (1993) // This is a real case, of course; the argument for me is whether this is considered a genre classic…or whether it's considered a classic at all. My recollection is that I liked a couple of performances, including Sutherland's, but found it very overpraised, net. Again, I'll hear counterarguments, but for now: 1
Citizen X (1995) // Finally, D. Suth piles up some more serious points in this TV joint about Andrei Chikatilo. His Mikhail Fetisov does seem to have existed, and Sutherland racked an Emmy and a Globe here: 4
The Assignment (1997) // Carlos the Jackal: real. Sutherland's character: hard to say, and the name/s resist effective searching, so: 1
The Big Heist (2001) // Said heist is the Lufthansa heist; Sutherland is Jimmy Burke (De Niro's character in GoodFellas). The movie sounds bizzad, but it still gets him: 3
Uprising (2001) // About the Warsaw ghetto trying to cast off the Nazis in 1943. I can't tell if Sutherland's character was a real person, so just: 1
Five Moons Plaza (2003) // Known by a bunch of different names, none familiar to me prior to this BET-CRP; one of Sutherland's many "only North American in an Italian picture" credits. Sutherland's judge investigates the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro, and while the latter happened, it seems clear the former didn't, or at least that Saracini is a composite/avatar: 1
Lord of War (2005) // I know, right? But the titular Lord was based on the real Viktor Bout. (Whose wife is named…Alla. Alla Bout. [rimshot]) Still counts: 1
I thought about assigning points for Reign Over Me (2007; post-9/11 story), Dirty Sexy Money (2006; Sutherland's Tripp Darling isn't quite directly a Kennedy), and Forsaken (2015's "two Sutherlands, no waiting" flick about a guy named John Henry Clayton, who may have existed in non-train-legend form but was unverifiable in this form). Couldn't justify any of them, in the end: 0
Trust (2018) // The Getty-kidnapping series with Hilary Swank (remember that thing?). Sutherland memorably played the skinflinting patriarch: 3
Miranda's Victim (2023) // Remember that thing? I didn't either. Sutherland's judge is an actual guy. The ensemble acting nod didn't get him any points, but he still snags: 3
Lawman: Bass Reeves (2023) // Reeves existed; not sure about Sutherland (a judge again, IINM), so just the: 1
That brings Donald Sutherland to 30 points total; divided by 200 IMDb acting credits, that's a 15 percent score. Much higher than I thought he'd score before I got into the 21st-century section of his résumé! I can identify a handful of points maybe I shouldn't have assigned, but subtracting those still puts us at a double-digit percentage...which, given that I guessed nine and truly thought we'd wind up with a six (or lower), is interesting. The last half decade of his career did a lot of lifting.
Got a favorite Sutherland true-crime property? Think points need reassigning? Any recs on properties here that may have fallen off the cultural radar? Drop down to the comments, let us know.