Kurt Sutter makes criminal families worth spending time with, but can keep us there too long. His blunt dialogue serves him well; the repeated betrayals of Sons of Anarchy expose his difficulty letting a story move on.
Fi1m perspective
Jax Teller reads his dead father's manuscript in Sons of Anarchy (2008) and finds an account of what the motorcycle club was meant to be. His mother and stepfather watch him with alarm. Sutter makes that family disagreement the start of a crime story, with Hamlet supplying the shape. The first three seasons make good use of Jax's uncertainty about the club. The next four keep finding reasons to stage another betrayal.
Sutter was one of the writers on Shawn Ryan's The Shield (2002), alongside Glen Mazzara and Adam Fierro. The credit for its dialogue is shared, and should stay that way. Exchanges are frank and quick enough to give the actors something to play beyond a tough pose. Still, too many hard lines arrive together, until everyone seems required to sound abrasive. It is an early warning of how insistently Sutter's work can announce its toughness.
Sons of Anarchy gives that toughness a convincing home. Paul Maibaum, Edward J. Pei and Jonathan Freeman shoot Charming in hard, flat daylight. Inside the clubhouse, their low lighting leaves faces floating above the table. Paris Barclay keeps his episodes moving, while Katey Sagal and Ron Perlman give Sutter two formidable villains as Gemma and Clay. Charlie Hunnam's Jax cannot quite carry the series between them.
We grew tired of the closing montages in Sons of Anarchy, because another slow cover song over faces in cars and at the bar had begun to ask for sympathy the writing had not earned. Editors Sidney Wolinsky and Hunter M. Via make the device work at first, but its repetition becomes oppressive. Sutter's uncertainty about whether the club consists of heroes or criminals is useful while Jax shares it. Later, the insistence that these people are a family excuses behaviour the series ought to examine.
He went on to write the boxing drama Southpaw (2015), create the medieval series The Bastard Executioner (2015) and co-create the motorcycle-club spin-off Mayans M.C. (2018). We would like to see more trust in quieter exchanges and less reliance on the next betrayal. Start with The Shield, then approach the Sons knowing that three good seasons come with four more attached.
Biography
Kurt Sutter is an American screenwriter, director, producer and actor. Born in Rahway, New Jersey, he graduated from Rutgers University with a BA in mass media and earned an MFA from Northern Illinois University. He worked in theatre and acting in New York before moving to Los Angeles to pursue screenwriting.
Sutter joined the writing staff of the FX series The Shield (2002) in its first season and rose to executive producer. He created the FX series Sons of Anarchy (2008–2014), on which he also wrote, directed and performed, and later created its spin-off Mayans M.C. (2018). He wrote the 2015 film Southpaw.
