A Simple Plan

Rating:
Summary: Not a Simple Movie
Review: Sam Raimi's thriller A Simple Plan is a well-executed film with some unexpected twists and surprises along the way. The story is about three friends Hank (Bill Paxton), Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton) and Lou (Brent Briscoe), who come across a crashed plane containing a sack filled with millions of dollars. After deciding to keep the cash, a series of subsequent events happen as Jacob and Hank try to cover up their crimes. The problems threaten their friendship and possibly, their lives.

Director Raimi, best known for the Evil Dead films, is in unfamiliar territory but does it surprisingly well, proving that he isn't stuck in zombie-horror genre hell, and Paxton and Thornton turn in some great performances as brothers with conflicting plans. And the hauntingly beautiful score by Danny Elfman adds to the film's pastiche of excellent direction and acting. One of the most surprising and compelling films i've ever seen.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant acting and direction for this quiet thriller.
Review: Proving that thrillers needn't exhaust audiences with bloated special effects and heavy doses of machine gun-fire, "A Simple Plan" joyously recalls the days when suspensers were more about suspense than pyrotechnics. Setting the story in the cold wintry woodlands of Minnesota, Scott B. Smith's screenplay dabbles in such engrossing elements as greed, consequence, and desperation, piling on plot twist after plot twist until the intensity almost becomes unbearable.

Bill Paxton plays Hank Mitchell, a working-class man who works at a local feed store to support he and his pregnant wife, Sarah, played by Bridget Fonda. He has a brother, Jacob, who is played by Billy Bob Thornton; Jacob, along with his pal Lou Chambers (Brent Briscoe), are the town's resident drunks. One snowy day, after a visit to their father's grave, Hank and Jacob, with Lou along for the ride, have an accident that sends Jacob's dog running into the woods. While looking for the dog, they come across a downed charter plane, its pilot dead, with a gym bag of four million dollar in tow.

The three waste no time tearing into the bag of "lost treasure," despite Hank's reservations about keeping the money. But Jacob and Lou have other plans, those which do not include alerting the proper authorities as to their recent find. After a heated argument, they agree that they will wait to split the money until they feel certain that no one will come looking for it. Just for safekeeping, Hank takes charge of the money, which soon takes charge of his good-hearted nature.

As the plot thickens, things begin to work into a frenzy. Sarah, now overcome with the idea of a wealthy life, urges Hank to keep a close watch on Lou, as well as Jacob, who becomes increasingly unstable as things reach new heights of desperation. The murder of a local farmer at the hands of Hank throws a new piece of leverage into the game, leading him to develop a new plan of making himself look completely innocent. More complications begins to arise, and soon, no one is left untouched.

Director Sam Raimi, whose previous work includes the wildly outrageous "Evil Dead" series, takes a unique turn in his career, directing Smith's screenplay (adapted from his own novel) with attention to story, action and character traits in equal measure. He is careful not to overburden his audience with too much at one time, clearing up one matter before introducing another so that each new development carries its own importance to the story. He also manages to keep things moving at a brisk pace, so as not to sink the movie into periods of boredom.

The script itself is one of the most chilling and satisfying I've seen in some time. It focuses on the effects of greed on mankind, turning the most well-intentioned of all townspeople into desperate, money-hungry slaves, replacing trust and good judgment with suspicion and rationalization. These changes are seen in each of the characters, most notably Hank and Sarah, whom we care for as the film opens, and utterly despise once it ends. Jacob, however, remains as the sole character with a grip on reality, overcome by his fears and his remorse for his actions; in the face of his brother's struggle to keep their twisted operation alive, he merely wants it all to come to an end and return to his life.

Fleshing out these characters appears to have been no simple task, but Paxton, Fonda, Thornton and Briscoe live up to the challenge. "A Simple Plan" portrays some of their best work, as well as that of Raimi's, who supercharges his otherwise quiet film with a terrific amount of underlying suspense that arises not solely from the grizzly crimes of its characters, but also from their unsettling states of mind once things get out of hand.

Rating:
Summary: fools
Review: Some people find a downed plane full of 3 million in cash under the snow. So they take it home and get greedy and the drug dealers come after them and then they burn the money. They never thought about leaving their home. not once.

Rating:
Summary: Thoroughly depressing.
Review: A SIMPLE PLAN is a film that -aside from the change in climate- reminds me of the Coen brothers BLOOD SIMPLE in a number of ways. Both films contain a relatively simple story line, complex, tortured characters, and...simple plans that go wrong. Here, we have two brothers, played wonderfully by Bill 'game over man!' Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton. Thornton is the rather dim-witted one. They stumble across a stash of money in northern Minnesota I believe and that's where the trouble begins. I have to give kudos to Director Sam Raimi's steady hand, and the Oscar-caliber performances of the leading men. Thornton in particular, is amazing. Filmed around the winter bliss of Ashland, Wisconsin, this film is bleak and unremittingly grim. While I can recommend it as a powerful story, my caveat is that by the end you will probably be feeling disturbed and uneasy. At the time I watched it with a friend he told me afterwards that it was the most depressing film he had ever seen. I won't go that far, but it's a definite downer.

As far as the DVD goes, it looks and sounds good, so if you are just looking for a good transfer you should be pleased. You also get a trailer, but really, this film should have more included in this age of digital media. When we only had magnetic VHS tape to work with -and all of its time constraints- I can understand only making a trailer available. But now we should expect more from the bloated film studios of Hollywood.

Rating:
Summary: Great script; so-so stars
Review: Bill Paxton plays a small-town accountant with a not-so-bright brother (Billy Bob Thornton) and a pregnant wife (Bridget Fonda). The two brothers and a friend (Brent Briscoe) find $4M in a crashed airplane. Ignoring his instinct to turn the money in, Paxton agrees to keep it and split it with the others. Each new day brings a shocking obstacle to their simple plan: First, a farmer innocently spots them, and wham, they kill him, and that is just the start of a horrifying series of events. The person who owned the money wants it back....

Bill Paxton looks right as the everyman character, but is too bland to make us care about him. Fonda is likewise colorless and boring. Thornton and Briscoe are suitably dim-witted and slovenly, but never show any other sides to their characters. I like the film for its script, score, and direction. The snow photography is impressively bleak and reminds one of Fargo. The novel A Simple Plan is so much more gripping and powerful than the film. Perhaps with other actors the film could have been more engrossing. Jack Lemmon, in his early days, could have played the accountant with heart-wrenching desperation; a young Meryl Streep would have made the wife's role much more interesting. All things considered, read the book instead. It's worth 5 stars.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent: A Minor Classic
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Raimi responds to FARGO, turns in his finest drama to date.
Review: (Beware the tides...there be spoilers ahead.)

A SIMPLE PLAN is a heart-rending drama about the impact a small fortune can have on ordinary people.

Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton play brothers Hank and Jacob Mitchell, who, along with Jacob's friend Lou (Brent Briscoe) find a downed airplane with a dead pilot and a cache of $1.4 million inside. Guessing it to be drug money, they decide the loss will likely go unreported.

So Hank proposes a simple plan that will allow them keep it: he will hide it until he feels it's safe to split it up. In the meantime, the three should go about their business as though the money doesn't exist. To ensure compliance, Hank threatens to burn the money if suspicion starts to fall on them.

Hank is the first one to break the vow of silence: he tells his pregnant wife, Sarah (Bridget Fonda), beginning by asking her a hypothetical question about found money. "I'd return the money," Sarah professes, earnestly.

Then Hank shows her the money.

Her immediate and dramatic reversal of position foreshadows the film's chilling climax. It's the first of many examples of the film's most thought-provoking observation: that all the plans and good intentions in the world are meaningless if we can't back them up when it counts.

It doesn't take long before the factions begin to form--Hank and Sarah vs. Lou and his wife, Nancy (Becky Ann Baker)--and poor, simple Jacob, who just wants to buy back his father's land, is caught in the middle, having to choose between his brother (with whom he has little in common and next to whom he feels inferior) and his best friend. It is a credit to Raimi, Paxton and Thornton that the audience is kept guessing where Jacob's loyalties lie until the last possible moment.

Thornton turns in a stunning performance as a simple man forced to choose between family and friend, life and death. The magnitude of his portrayal is most poignant in a tiny scene where he sits alone in a bar, playing with two shot glasses. No words necessary--the image speaks volumes of desolation and despair.

Not everyone will want to own this movie--it's brilliant, compelling, and features a wealth of stunning performances, but it ain't a fun time. Watch it when you're looking to wrestle with some philosophical questions--you might come away wondering how well you know yourself.

Rating:
Summary: Devastating portrait of how greed ruins men's souls
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant script
Review: 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?

Rating:
Summary: A Simple Plan isn't so simple
Review: 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.