A Simple Plan (1998)

An endless white landscape of rolling hills and snow-blanketed forests. A lonely acoustic score (by Danny Elfman) playing in the background. A vision of rural simplicity portrayed in hushed tones. The stillness is about to shatter. Brothers Hank (Bill Paxton), an accountant at a small-town feed store, and Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton), an unemployed, hygienically challenged dim bulb, accompanied by Jacob's oafish pal Lou (Brent Briscoe), stumble across a downed plane in the brush containing a corpse and a sack containing millions of dollars--surely the aftermath of a drug deal, they conclude. Greed overcomes good sense, and the three agree to hide the money for a year and keep the secret to themselves. A simple plan indeed, and it doesn't take long for it to go all to hell as the lure of wealth tears at kinship and friendship, and the ruthless machinations of impetuous partners leave a body count in its wake. Bridget Fonda costars as Hank's wife, whose initial hesitation gives way to cold-blooded plotting. Sam Raimi, best known for wowing audiences with stylistic gymnastics and manic mayhem, directs this quietly desperate thriller with chilly restraint, finding its cold, tragic heart in the estranged relationship between Hank and Jacob: the college boy blind to the truth of his own family and the town loser whose tortured soul reveals a humanity lost on his brother (a brilliant performance by Thornton). Adapted by Scott B. Smith from his acclaimed novel. --Sean Axmaker Amazon.com

Good purchase

This was a good choice; it came on time and quality was great. I'm glad I bought it. I'm always glad to purchase from Amazon. Good service and good products. Keep it up.
Rita Allen February 29, 2008

The genius of Billy Bob in a story you'll interact with

As you watch this movie, about 3 dillweed country men who happen upon $4 million in a crashed and forgotten plane, you'll think, "What would *I* do?" Clearly the movie's characters make some colossal mistakes, but the frustration the viewer feels is intentional, just like jump scenes in a thriller, or tears in a chick-flick.

I'm not a big fan of Bill Paxton, but he does well in this role as a "college edumacated" feed mill worker. It's a good role for him. However, Billy Bob Thornton, who I personally feel is our finest living actor, always adds dimension to any charcter he portrays. His character is a pathetic, rather homely fellow who actually seems brighter in many respects than his brother, the Paxton character. Billy Bob's sad character is egged along to make poor choices, when it seems that had he been alone, it all may have worked out.

Paxton's wife, Bridget Fonda, plays a creepy woman who goes along with all the deciet as easily as deciding what to make for dinner. She tries to interject intelligent ideas, but no idea involving dishonesty is ever a really GOOD one.

The last main character, played by Brent Briscoe, adds even more low-quality morals to the mix. Briscoe has done several other movies with Billy Bob, such as Sling Blade, Mr. Woodcock and Waking Up in Reno. They work well together. His brash personality in movies softens Billy Bobs Southern flair some.

I **LOVED** this movie. I'm not one to love the happily ever after type movies. I like reality, grit, depression, sadness, drama. This fit the bill. I'm also a fan of 'the whole package', a movie just can't ride on one actor, or one good plot. This movie is visually beautiful, has some great odd lines, mostly delivered by Billy Bob, such as "like, TA-DA, y'know" and his reference to Easy Rider, "waahn-ditdit, like that guy, remember?". It has suspense, the interaction as there's no way to not think, "I'd have done this..." some action, murder, deceit, friendship, painful truths, painful lies, greed and can all be summed up by the famous quote, "the love of money is the root of all evil". How true.

One can't go wrong with a Billy Bob movie, with extremely few exceptions. I don't have the DVD, just VHS, but am slowly converting my library to DVD. I don't expect "extras" on a DVD, so the lack of them would not be a disappointment. (as one reader complained about) The movie is what I enjoy, and this is a fascinating tale of a tangled web of deceit and lies and dishonesty that swallows up character after character as it snowballs.

Take the time to appreciate the depth of Thornton's character, and the visual beauty of the stark landscape, and evaluate your own morals against the characters. Don't miss it. October 10, 2007

A SIMPLE PLAN...GREATEST CRIME THRILLER!!

A SIMPLE PLAN IS THE GREATEST CRIME THRILLER. THE STORY ABOUT 3 GOOD PEOPLE AND A WIFE INVOLVED WHAT LOOKS TO BE A SIMPLE PLAN....KEEP THE MONEY TILL SPRING, WAIT TO SEE IF ANYONE IS LOOKING FOR IT AND IF NOT SPLIT THE MONEY AND LEAVE TOWN. SOUND SIMPLE RIGHT....DEAD WRONG AND THIS MOVIES WILL SHOW U THE NUMEROUS THINGS THAT GO WRONG FROM DISTRUST TO BACK STABBING TO EVEN COLD BLOODED MURDER. THIS FILM HAS IT ALL BLACK HUMOR, CHILLING THRILLERS, GORE AND AMAZING STORY LINE. I HAVE TO SAY THE PERFORMANCES ARE BRILLIANT THE CAST WAS SO GOOD I WAS DISAPPOINTED THAT THEY WERE NOT NOMINATED FOR THEIR ROLES ESPECIALLY BILL PAXTON AN UNDERRATED ACTOR WHO GAVE SUCH A BRILLIANT PERFORMANCES AS HANK...THE SMART YET WORRIED OUT MEMBER OF THE GROUP TRYING TO KEEP THIS SIMPLE PLAN TOGETHER. BUT THERE IS A LEARNING LESSON IN THIS FILM THAT STANDS OUT
THE MESSAGE IS THAT CRIME WILL ALWAYS COST MORE THAN IT PAYS! October 9, 2007

Slow as molasses

Even if this movie didn't move along at the snails pace that it does (until the last 30 minutes or so), it still is a below average drama. Good cast, but their acting here could have used some redirection...Bill Paxton has this perpetually melodramatic look of dread thruout the movie, although given the outlandish actions his character takes and the hollywood plot, it's not too surprising. Billy Bob Thornton mumbled his way through an uneven performance where 1 minute he's jibbering as aimlessly and disjointed as he appears and the next minute he's suddenly clearly voicing his scenes with an oddly incongruent profundity. Lovely Bridget Fonda was fairly non-descript by comparison of those two. This like alot of Hollywood fictitious dramas take a whole lot of suspending your skepticism of the actions the characters take because of their sheer implausibility. On the other hand, with virtually the entire supporting cast getting wiped out, it does keep you watching to see what's going to happen next! October 5, 2007

A Good Movie

Recently, I found a copy of this movie in an old box of home video releases and watched it for the first time. All I knew about the film was my recollection of a thumbnail sketch of the story and that it had received good reviews when it first came out, almost ten years ago. Watching the TV reviews again on a website archive (Gene Siskel reviewed it two months before his death, with Roger Ebert), I was reminded of the praise for the film's acting, pacing, and "foreboding" mood. Reading the reviews on this site, I enjoyed the insights that some of them, both positive and negative, had to offer. Unfortunately, too many of the reviews, often very skimpy, went way over the top one way or the other without making any serious attempt to explain why (the movie is neither a "masterpiece" nor a "disgrace") and got bogged down in lazy, sloppy, inapt comparisons (this is not "Fargo" or "Macbeth"), trivial hang-ups (whether a character behaved exactly as the reviewer would have liked or a body flew at exactly the right angle after being shot by a rifle), and tedious platitudes ("greed is bad," "money is the root of all evil").

I saw nothing to complain about in the writing or lead performances, maybe because they were built on a strong foundation of the book (I have not read it but it has received a lot of praise). Bill Paxton does a solid job. He looks and acts persuasively his "all-American boy-next-door" role. Bridget Fonda, as his soft-on-the-surface but hard-as-nails wife, plays a terrific scene of brutal honesty about her life and conveys a merciless, misguided, blinkered sense of intelligence. The character of Paxton's brother, played by Billy Bob Thornton, shows some depth, surprises, and touches that make it much more than a stereotypical portrayal of a "retard."

There is smart, honest dialogue. Some examples are Fonda telling Paxton that he would not be suspected of wrongdoing "because he is so normal," various characters calling each other on their mistakes and illusions, and Thornton confiding under stress to Paxton uncomfortable facts about his growing up and their father's demise. Contrary to the negative reviews, the movie manages to make the characters' downward spiral into ever-more disastrous events seem convincing, through its well-done set-up and depiction of them. The characters make so many mistakes because of their limitations and because the situation they face is so new and unusual to them. Of course the movie exaggerates, but it is handled well and makes a point. Its mundane ending is an interesting commentary.

On the other hand, the negative reviews are right that the film's animal imagery, especially an early, noisy, ugly scene in the crashed airplane, comes across as heavy-handed and overdone. The tone is set well enough by the deeply unhappy, going-through-the-motions characters, grim events, and daily-grind, snowy-wilderness surroundings, without having to go to excess with the ear-piercing, carrion-foraging black birds. I suppose the intended message may be that the human beings in the story, although horrified by the flesh-eating birds, become little better than them in the end. Still, the symbolism in the movie feels clumsy and distracting, rather than seamlessly enhancing the story (maybe it was handled better in the book). At times, Paxton and Thornton do not seem very believable as brothers, though to some extent their incompatibility is the point. Some supporting characters and performances, particularly the dim-witted sheriff, are weak. Gary Cole is completely wasted in the film. And the pacing gets a little forced toward the end of the movie.

It makes me uncomfortable to read simpering, simplistic, one-sided reviews, long on mindless hype and boosterism, that give a seriously flawed movie an easy pass, make no attempt to come to grips with its problems or, worse, try to dump on anyone who points them out, as with the lazy, unintelligent flicking of the "not helpful" button on others. Such reviews offer little or nothing of value and only contribute to the impression that moviegoers are suckers. But it also bothers me to read hatchet-job reviews that become so self-indulgent in coming up with supposedly clever put-downs and in heaping on the vitriol that they show no appreciation for what the film does, or attempts to do, well in individual scenes and in its larger design, and sometimes read as if they were based on preconceived, surface-level, gut-driven reactions formed without even watching the movie very well or at all (like those "reviews" that are based on watching a movie for ten minutes or on a few glimpses in between naps and that therefore are completely worthless and a waste of everyone's time). Such reviews can give as false an impression about what is on the screen as overly positive ones. Overall, A Simple Plan is a well-acted, well-written, well-paced movie with some real intelligence. September 25, 2007

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