A Simple Plan

This film is an adaptation of what is, without a doubt, an amazing debut novel of the same name that was written by Scott Smith. It is a fairly good adaptation of the book and is a modern day morality tale, which sees people's lives change significantly, when they come upon a veritable treasure trove of money. The change is not necessarily for the better, as the viewer will discover.

The plot revolves around two, small town brothers, Hank (Bill Paxton) and Jacob Mitchell (Billy Bob Thornton), who, along with Jacob's friend, Lou (Brent Briscoe), inadvertently come upon a downed plane that is buried in the snow, deep in the woods of a rural area. In that plane is a dead pilot, along with over four million dollars in cold, hard cash. All three of them could sure use the money. The question is, what are they going to do about it?

They come up with what they think is a simple plan. They will take the money and just wait and see, not spending it, until the coast seems clear. From the moment they make this decision, life is never the same for any of them. Hank, taking charge of the money for safekeeping, begins to undergo a change that is seemingly uncharacteristic of one who is outwardly so respectable, rational, and benign of countenance.

As the issue of the money begins to divide the three accomplices, greed and betrayal bubble to the surface, to culminate in a series of chilling, cold-blooded murders. Meanwhile, Hank, manipulated by his Ma Barker of a wife, Sarah (Bridget Fonda), begins a personal downward spiral, succumbing to an evil so profound, that it will leave the viewer open mouthed.

What happens to them all makes for an amazingly powerful and riveting drama. Fine performances are given by the entire cast. Pill Paxton is perfect in the role of Hank, the college educated, clean cut, family man with a secret moral ambiguity that makes him susceptible to his wife's Machiavellian behind-the-scenes direction. Hank has no clear moral compass. He really would like to keep the money, but wants reassurances from his wife that it would be okay to do so. His wife, a corn fed, all American miss, has no qualms about what to do, and Hank is too morally weak to resist in the face of his wife's wily machinations.

Billy Bob Thornton steals the show in the role of Jacob, the good ole boy, knuckle dragging, older brother who lost his inheritance, the family farm, so Hank could go to college. Unlike Hank, he has no job, no home, no wife, no children, and other than Hank, no family. He lives in a squalid apartment with his dog. He, however, has more of a moral compass than Hank has, and is reluctantly locked into a series of actions that make him sort of lose his lease on life. The viewer can see the personal angst that Jacob is undergoing and cannot help but be moved by Billy Bob Thornton's poignant performance.

Brent Briscoe does a fine job in the role of Lou, Jacob's best friend and the unemployed town drunk. He is a guy of limited intelligence who sees the money as a way out of his predicament, and wants his share sooner rather than later. His impatience and poor impulse control set off a series of events that lead to betrayal and his silencing. Bridget Fonda, looking like a blue ribbon winner in a county fair pie baking contest, gives a fine performance as the coolly collected Sarah, the wife who plots and plans Hank's moves. Of all of them, she is the one who wants the money the most and will stop at nothing to get it.

While the film deviates somewhat from the book, and the film's ending lacks the ultimate retribution for Hank and Sarah's sins and their role in the debacle created by their desire for the money, it is a still a wonderful and powerful morality tale. The screenplay is well-crafted, the cast is excellent, and the direction is deft. This is an engrossing film that is worthy of being in one's personal collection.

Brilliantly acted by Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton in particular, this is a gut wrenching film about greed in its saddest presentation.

The moral center of the story is Bill Paxton's character, Hank Mitchell. When he, his out-of-luck brother, Jacob, played by Thornton and his brother's loser of a friend, Lou, stumble onto $4.4 million dollars, his first instinct is to call the police and turn the money in. Who knows where the money is from? But the serpent of Eden is in this story and sinks its fangs into every character, and even a man wit a good heart like Bill Paxton eventually bites from the proverbial apple. He agrees to hold on to the money, just until the thaw, until the plane is found, and then see if anyone comes looking for the money. All swear to secrecy, to not even tell their wives. When Hank arrives home, he asks his wife what she would do if she found a large sum of money. Her response is similar to his - call the police. Regardless of where the money came from, to keep it is tantamount to stealing. But when he dumps the money on the table, showing her that his questioning isn't hypothetical, the moviegoer can see the change in her eyes; can see the proverbial serpent crawling up her leg as clearly as if it actually were. She moves easily and comfortably from a person of strong moral character, like her husband, to a person eventually consumed with avarice.

Simple in its presentation, it's really a complex story. We learn that Lou is more of a brother to Jacob than Hank is, and we can certainly see that in the character's physical presentation. Paxton looks too clean cut for this small town - certainly too proper to be working in a feed mill. Jacob, in stark contrast, is right where he belongs. He has greasy hair, no job prospects, no girlfriend, no wife - not even a decent pair of glasses (he could have used a visit from Hermione to mend the broken center). Lou is the town drunk and proud of it, and although he has a wife, it is a relationship with very little substance. Not one of love, but of comfort. In a telling scene of distance, although it is a scene of remarkable and surprising subtlety, Jacob pokes fun at the way his brother drinks his whiskey. It's not the way that other men in this small town would drink their whiskey. In truth, Hank's mannerisms in this respect are somewhat effete.

With every moral dilemma presented to them, they all sink deeper and deeper into the serpent's grip. To say more would be to give away one of the more tragic endings since Romeo and Juliet (don't laugh, I'm serious), and not an ending that you see coming from a mile away.

Before watching A SIMPLE PLAN, I saw THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE, John Huston's 1948 classic that also tackled the same subject as this film. Fred C. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart) allowed greed to get the best of him, and it destroyed him. But Huston wrapped this little tragedy in the adventure genre, and while it was indeed a thrilling adventure, Dobbs' downfall in Huston's film doesn't seem (on a visceral level, at least) quite as tragic as what happens to the major characters in Sam Raimi's film.

The major difference that perhaps makes A SIMPLE PLAN more powerful as an examination of greed than SIERRA MADRE is this: Huston's main characters went looking for riches in a land known to be full of 'em, so they didn't have to necessarily worry about being caught stealing anything---Dobbs & Co. only had to worry about other people trying to steal their gold. Hank (Bill Paxton), Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton), and Lou (Brent Briscoe) accidentally find $4.4 million in unmarked American currency in a downed plane in a quiet, snowy Minnesota town, and the moment they decide to steal the money for themselves (and that is basically what they decide to do, although they certainly try to convince themselves that it's not stealing) is the moment that changes all of their lives forever.

In SIERRA MADRE, Walter Huston's character talked early in the film about how he's seen money destroy men's souls. That is exactly what happens to the characters in A SIMPLE PLAN. It leads Hank to coldblooded murder, it leads Hank's wife (Bridget Fonda) to become a modern version of Lady Macbeth, and it drives Jacob to despair. In one key moment, Jacob confesses to Hank that he "feels evil," and that just about sums up the movie's theme succinctly.

While Huston's film also worked as a grand adventure tale, Raimi's film is more in the bleak, film noir style of the Coen Brothers' FARGO, right down to its Minnesota setting and constantly falling snow. It sometimes feels like a suspense-thriller (especially towards the end), but there are no stylish, bombastic action scenes here in the manner of Raimi's earlier films---just a lot of quietly devastating moments and flashes of quick but shocking violence. It's the emotional violence done to these characters, though, that reverberates throughout the whole film.

The performances are all powerfully convincing across the board, and while some might take issue with the plausibility of some of the plot twists in the film's later moments (I can't believe that no one actually bothered to ask to see that person's badge just to make sure he was who he said he was), that is hardly enough to detract from the tragic cumulative impact of this film. Highly recommended.