A Simple Plan (1998) Film Review
Sam Raimi’s Taut Morality Play Is Terrific in Every Way
Mar 15, 2009
Hank (Bill Paxton), his brother Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton), and Jacob’s pal Lou (Brent Briscoe) keep the bag, which they find in a downed plane covered by snow in rural small-town Minnesota after a fateful car accident. Reasoning that it’s drug money no one will step forward to claim, they allow Hank to take care of it until the spring, after which they will split it equally and leave town if no one claims it in the interim.
Pals React Poorly to Having to Keep Such a Weighty Secret
Almost immediately after striking this pact, Hank fails to follow his own advice to Lou to keep their discovery from his wife, telling his own wife Sarah (Bridget Fonda) as soon as he gets home and emptying the money onto the living room table for effect. Little does he know that his at-first reluctant confidant will turn into the second coming of Lady Macbeth, whose first scheme ends in murder disguised as a snowmobile accident.
Lou is the second to crack under the pressure, visiting Hank’s home very late at night and demanding his share immediately in order to pay his debts, eventually threatening to reveal Hank to the town sheriff as the man responsible for the aforementioned murder, which Jacob drunkenly confessed to Lou. Though Hank gets Lou to back down by explaining that if he went down he would take the others with him, Hank feels betrayed by his brother.
That betrayal drives Hank, with some further prodding by Sarah, to pounce on Jacob’s brotherly guilt by enlisting him as an accomplice in a plan to show Lou just whose side Jacob is on, which again turns fatal and has even worse unforeseen consequences when it alerts a shady FBI agent to the possible whereabouts of a downed plane he’s been looking for.
Twisty Thriller Shows that Crime Just Doesn’t Pay
Needless to say, it all ends in very ugly fashion, with the few left alive trying, and mostly failing, to pretend that all is normal and such a sequence of events never happened. Much kudos must be extended to the crew, especially to Scott B. Smith’s Oscar-nominated screenplay, which he adapted from his own novel, Danny Elfman for his foreboding score, and Alar Kivilo for his cinematography, which makes it clear that these beautiful, wide open spaces and pastoral country homes can hide within them the darkest impulses of the soul.
Bill Paxton does a very good job of portraying the essentially good man who is tragically swayed into making morally questionable decisions by opportunistic people, the chilliest of whom is Bridget Fonda, who turns even the slightest slip of her husband’s good nature to her advantage in order to attain the ill-gotten American Dream.
Billy Bob Thornton’s Performance Nominated for Best Supporting Actor Oscar (1999)
Best of all, Billy Bob Thornton subtly brings forth the years of younger sibling jealousy and friction between intellectual and economic classes in the screenplay. It all adds up to a thought-provoking, suspenseful time at the movies.
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