Customer Reviews

A Simple Plan (Widescreen)

5 star:		(66)
4 star:		(34)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

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.

A simple plan is above all a deep study if the iiner demons of the human being in the present.
Three men suddenly find 4,4 millions dollars in the bag inside a crashed plane. That fact becomes as smart device for developing the hidden greed, the loss of trust , and the awake of old apparently forgotten past in the childhood of these two brothers.
The script counts with a well supported cast. Paxton has never been so credible in his role; and Bridget Fonda too as his analytical lovely wife, who will be the power behind the throne.
Be warning with four notorius mistakes with the edition: The first three are linked by the same mistake; you see the microphone in the superior level of the frame, and I will tell you the sequences.
The first one; when Lou inquires for his money in the lobby of Paxton; the second is in the hospital when Paxton is with Fonda with their baby , the third is when the police inquires to Thornton about the stranger death of Lou and his wife; and the four mistake is very fast , it is when the two brothers are with Lou in his home. The camera makes a close up to Thornton and he suddenly looks at the camera, by a very brief instant!
The basic aspect of this film would seem turn around this question: what would you do set in such conditions?

This is surely by some distance director Sam Raimi's best movie. (Unless you're one of those deranged seventeen-year-old bug-eyed monsters from Iowa or Idaho who think "Evil Dead II" is the best movie ever made, a view that often comes as a package with the conviction that Marilyn Manson is a great philosopher and is only slightly less incredible, but I digress...)

The pitch must have been simple enough: it's "Fargo" meets "Shallow Grave". It reecall "Fargo" both in its Minnesota setting and it's picture of small time losers making a huge mess of being criminals. And the premise is very pretty similar to the Scottish movie "Shallow Grave" which put both its director Danny Boyle and star Ewan McGregor on the map. A small group of people find a dead body no one seems to know about. And along with it, a enormous pile of - almost certainly ill-gained cash that no one seems to know about either. What possible harm if we just take this lot and keep quiet...?

This isn't as good as "Fargo" - What is? - but is considerably better than "Shallow Grave". While Boyle's movie tried far to hard to be hip, Raimi is out to make something with the tragic inevitability of a Greek tragedy and Greek tragedy is never hip. The group here comprises middle class accountant, Hank Mitchell (Paxton), his inadequate dimwit brother (Thornton) and the latter's best friend, unemployed Lou (Brent Briscoe). They find 4 million dollars in a crashed plane buried in snow in some woods and decide to keep quiet and hang on to it. But of course we know this is a morality tale. WE know this is a big mistake. We know it won't work out. We know there will be a problem of trust between these three (Jacob, while he's the most sympathetic character, is too stupid to be very trustworthy and Lou and Hank have never liked each other much). There is. We know the bad guys will come looking for their cash. They do. We know it will end in tears. It does. Not least, very soon after they take the money, when the body count starts to rise. Not least, when Hank's homely all-American wife Sarah (Fonda) starts to turn into Lady MacBeth. ... The result is a beautifully constructed, rewarding and likable movie.

Whomever said that money is the root of all evil was so right. A Simple Plan, Sam Raimi's (the Evil Dead trilogy, Spider-Man) critically acclaimed thriller, despite it's flaws, has a lot going for it, and for the most part fails to disappoint. When brothers Hank (Bill Paxton) and Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton) and their friend Lou (Brent Briscoe) stumble across a crashed plane with a sack loaded with cash, they conceive a simple plan to hide it for a year and keep their mouths shut. But this simple plan goes awry after a series of events that tear everyone apart, and changes them all forever. Paxton, and especially Thornton, are superb. These two actors give powerhouse performances that must be seen to believed. Bridget Fonda's performance as Paxton's wife however doesn't come off as too believeable though. Her transition from voice of reason to cold hearted money monger just doesn't take well. Raimi's direction is surprising to say the least; mostly known for the Evil Dead films at the time, A Simple Plan relies on slow paced storytelling as opposed to visceral thrills. All in all, if your looking for a more than solid thriller, look no further.

A simple plan may not be so simple when money is at hand. It is the winter time, and everything is covered in snow. In a small town where life is as simple, and as pleasurable as can be, and all anyone cares about is eachother, things can go elsewhere.

When three friends stumple upon a plane in the snow with a bag consisting of 4 million dollars, what are they to do with it? Thinking that it's money from a drug deal gone bad, the three get nervous that anyone else might see it. Promising to split it at a later date, They give the money to Hank (Bill Paxton), thinking they can trust him with it. But things go wrong. Very wrong. When greed becomes obvious, Hank and his preagnant wife, Sarah (Bridget Fonda), start to plot against Lou, the more honest one. Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton), Hank's somewhat innocent brother, is forced to play along with the couples scheme. Maybe it would've been easier to just have kept their mouths shut, and not said a word, for the truth is about to revealed where the money really came from.

The acting was great, especially by Brigdet Fonda; hadn't seen her in a while. This story may as well be true. Things like this happen everyday. Greed begins to well up in people's eye's, and they want it all to themselves. A somewhat intense movie, yet somehow very real. The plot was great. Still a good movie to watch when your alone, in the dark.

While the straight-laced Bill Paxton slowly watched things spin ridiculously out of control in this caper-plot film, I give it credit for the generally realistic portrayal of a couple of truly stupid people. For instance, after three guys find $4 million in a crashed plane and agree to keep it secret (and keep the money themselves), a local police officer happens along and visits with Bill Paxton, who desperately wants the cop to simply leave. However, Billy Bob Thornton pops up and asks, "Did you tell him about the plane?" Such monumental stupidity was, in my experience, quite genuine -- I definitely have known people, a couple of them relatives, who were every bit this brainless.

And it really makes you wonder who is less intelligent -- the two nitwits whose mental deprivation leads the group into an escalating fiasco, or the college-educated accountant who trusts two such numbskulls to follow his orchestration. This film is worth seeing once, just for the characters' stupidity, but you'll likely feel no need ever to watch it again.

A Simple Plan starred one of my favorite, most underrated actors in Bill Paxton. Unfortunately, I had the poor fate of being forced to watch this terrible film in class. So allow me to warn all those who intend to buy this: don't purchase this film, it's not as great as you may think and you will not walk away from it satisfied because it is a highly disturbing picture that tried to create moral values by destroying others.

I really enjoyed how this film began, three guys, two of whom are brothers, discover a downed plane and inside of it is a suit case full of cash, millions worth. Paxton's character is the only one out of the three of them who wants to turn the cash into the police, he's a stand up, moral guy who wants to do what's right. But he caves in to his brother and buddy and they decide to form a simple plan: if nobody puts an ad out to claim it they keep the money for themselves. That's the "simple plan." Gee, I guess the director thought all of us viewers were morons because I wonder what happens instead?

Bridget Fonda's character is a flake: she starts off as this moral wife who attempts to be the conscience of her husband, which is Paxton, but almost instantly becomes this greedy female dog who hordes over the cash. A complete turn around in character. What's disturbing is this isn't the only character in this film that completely turns around and abandons all forms of a moral guidance. It's almost as if nobody in this film has any back bone, any moral fiber, that they are instead controlled by money.

As much as greed is a serious flaw in people, making people who start out as moral good guys/girls and instantly transforming them into Scrooges is rather cliche for this movie and I think unreal. Fonda's sudden turn doesn't nearly bother me as the drastic, disturbing turn of Bill Paxton's character.

As the movie progresses, Paxton's character is practically responsible for two deaths. The first death is the worst, where he MURDERS an old man. How can we possibly sympathize with a guy who committs cold blooded murder? I understand the objective of this film, but even films that play off the dark side of mankind need a character we can trust, enjoy, and sympathize because we know he's at least TRYING to do the right thing. Paxton starts out as trying to do the right thing, then he shifts to trying to do the wrong thing. This isn't character development, despite what most of you may think. This is called stepping out of character because Paxton's character just switches, it doesn't develop. There's a difference. In fact Paxton's character, the initial character dies in my mind because he isn't even a shade of the character Paxton finishes the film with.

I also thought the violence in this film was totally unnecessary. It was totally out of control and very yahoo like. I mean, Paxton's best friend tries to kill him with a sawed off shot-gun? Then his buddy's wife reaches into a cookie jar and pulls out a revolver and also tries to kill Paxton? But Paxton blows her guts out in defense? Then Paxton's character, mercilessly, blows the brains out of the bad guy in the end? And the kicker, the absolute worst part of the film is when Paxton's brother gets all depressed in the end and he wants to die so he asks Paxton to shoot him. And he does! He shoots his own brother! What is this film?! What is up with Paxton's character? He goes around blowing people away, he began as a character with a moral back bone and yet he commits more murders and is responsible for more deaths than Ted Bundy! And people think his character is sympathetic?

This is an awful film. I understand the moral point about greed, but while trying to teach us that point the film makes the characters totally unbelievable by making them switch into these dark, evil people who go around shooting their own family members! I mean this is insane, I can't believe people actually think this is a good movie. I give it two stars because at least it goes through with its lesson, unfortunately it costed itself three stars by giving us characters we can't possibly relate to or sympathize with because most of us wouldn't turn 180 degrees because we found some loot. We may horde over it, but would we be willing to kill and murder for it? Think about it, because according to this film you would.

A SIMPLE PLAN is the first adult film of director Samuel Raimi. No more over-referenced or bubblegum movies. So let's be fair, A SIMPLE PLAN is quite a winner. With a remarkable performance (once again !) of Billy Bob Thornton -the Al Pacino of the nineties- which will stay in the annals of the Film Noir genre, with a Bill Paxton unable to stop the wave of brutal deaths his deep honesty has produced and with a venomous Bridget Fonda in an angel/devil role, Samuel Raimi has, in my opinion, directed the cast of the year 1998.

With FARGO and AFFLICTION, A SIMPLE PLAN is the third snowy movie I've seen during the last months. It seems that cold winters produce an eruption of hidden fantasies among american citizens. But we're not in Sweden, in a Bergman movie, problems are not solved after long philosophical discussions in front of a warm fire. No, here we rather act than talk. So blood is flowing a lot in A SIMPLE PLAN, - the Samuel Raimi touch I suppose -, and solely a brief commentary of Bill Paxton at the beginning of the movie could be considered as a hint of a psychological dimension of the characters involved.

But let's not despair, it's the first Samuel Raimi movie that is not made in priority for the drive-ins audience and it contains a lot of promises. Overall a very good movie for a cold saturday night.

A nightmarish DVD.