Donald Sutherland: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked
3. General Donald McClintock - Outbreak (1995)
Prior to the current craze of the The Hunger Games films, it was a rare occurrence to see Donald Sutherland take up the mantle of the unflinching, obsessive villain. Most of the entries on this list are roles that show off Sutherland's kinder side in film, but in Outbreak, he was simply just a soulless arse. After discovering a deadly African disease not too dissimilar to the Ebola virus in an African jungle, Donald McClintock and his colleague Billy Ford (Morgan Freeman) eradicate any trace of the village and the virus after taking samples home with them to America. Fast-forwarding 28 years into the present day of the film, the virus resurfaces and takes hold on a quiet American town. By this time, McClintock has become a general, and the main antagonist of the film as he takes it upon himself to once again hide the existence of the virus in an effort to make it a potential biological weapon at the disposal of the American government. Unlike Freeman's repentant nature as Ford, Sutherland takes his character in the complete opposite direction, making McClintock an obsessively controlling senior army official concerned only with concealing the truth. Sutherland's character may be a little too one-sided in his personality (and slightly shallow because of it), but the actor's performance is no less brilliant because of it.
Joe is a freelance games journalist who, while not spending every waking minute selling himself to websites around the world, spends his free time writing. Most of it makes no sense, but when it does, he treats each article as if it were his Magnum Opus - with varying results.
