A SIMPLE PLAN
Hey look, a REAL, professional review
Sam Raimi is a director most widely known for work in the horror genre, such as his Evil Dead trilogy. He has branched out with a western (The Quick And The Dead) and even a superhero movie (Darkman), but with A Simple Plan, he appears to have aimed for mainstream appeal and critical respectability. How grandly he has succeeded.
A Simple Plan tells the story of three men - Hank (Bill Paxton), his brother Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton) and Jacob's friend Lou (Brent Briscoe) - who stumble across a crashed airplane in the snow-buried woods of Minnesota. Inside the plane they find over four million dollars in unmarked bills, and after some arguing about what should be done about their find, they assume it's drug money that won't be missed and decide to keep it. Hank, knowing he's far more levelheaded than either of his companions, convinces the other two to let him keep the cash until spring when the plane will be inevitably discovered, and they all agree to divide the cash then if nobody comes looking for it.
The story unfolds with gut-twisting intensity, as the three men do what they can to protect their secret from outsiders and their interests from each other. Educated, sensible Hank is forced to cover up for the glaring mistakes and indiscretions made by his simpleminded brother and the erratic, often drunk Lou. The steps he takes to accomplish this sometimes reach frightening proportions, but the viewer is never allowed to step back and feel superior to him; the circumstances are always just difficult enough for us to be able to imagine that even we ourselves are capable of making the choices he makes.
Paxton is often a wooden actor when not handling more humorous material as he did in True Lies or even Aliens, but here, he creates a cinematic rarity: an intelligent, sympathetic, and thoroughly believable character who can convince the audience of good intentions in even the most horrible of deeds. Bridget Fonda, as his wife Sarah, is also excellent in a role that evokes Lady Macbeth, pushing her husband further into darkness even though their own welfare is her first priority. Thornton and Briscoe also excel in roles that might infuriate and frustrate the audience with their bumbling, but they are always compelling.
Raimi's direction is first-rate, capturing the wintry prairie gloom and small-town desolation in a way that the Coens only hinted at in the more light-hearted Fargo. There are shocking moments, but Raimi never uses them exploitatively, and thus they achieve their maximum effect. The script by Scott B. Smith (adapted from his novel) never once takes a false turn.
If A Simple Plan has any real flaw, it is the uncharacteristically poor music from Danny Elfman. One of the most consistently inventive and compelling scorers in Hollywood, Elfman here distracts with an out-of-tune piano and annoys with overly maudlin strings in the film's climactic moments. This does little to diminish the impact of the tale, however, and what results is a magnificently crafted examination of the choices that a good man can make when given the right motivation, and the best film of 1998.