A Simple Plan | Sam Raimi (1998)

Before the Spider-Man trilogy and just after completing his Evil Dead trilogy with Army of Darkness, Sam Raimi directed a few cult movies that were not all that successful and were generally ignored by the movie going public. The Quick and The Dead, a western starring Sharon Stone and a pre-titanic Leonardo DiCaprio and pre-Oscar Russell Crowe. Although quite well liked for having Raimi’s signature lunatic camera moves applied to a western setting it didn’t do much business and has become a cult curiosity.

Raimi followed this up with For Love of the Game, which was a Kevin Costner starring baseball movie. Trouble was Costner’s star was falling and where once he triumphed in a baseball setting with Bull Durham, this time nobody cared.

Before the critical acclaim of the similarly underseen The Gift in 2000, Raimi directed A Simple Plan. Based on a best selling 1993 novel by Scott B.Smith. When released in late 1998 it received comparisons to the similar critically acclaimed Oscar winning Fargo due to its snowbound setting.

The plot starts in a small snowy American town with Hank Mitchell (Bill Paxton - Frailty) an affable accountant for a local farming store scraping through life with his pregnant wife Sarah (Bridget Fonda). Hanks slow and dim-witted brother Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton - Sling Blade) lives in the same town and spends his days drinking and messing around with his buddy Lou (Brent Briscoe).

On a visit to their father’s grave Jacob’s dog jumps from Hank’s pick up truck and runs into the woods chasing a fox. Hank, Jacob and Lou journey into the woods where they find a crashed aeroplane and a dead pilot. Inside the plane is $4,400,000 in $100 bills. At first Hank wants to alert the authorities and turn in the cash, Jacob and Lou who are both unemployed want to keep the money. In the end they decide on a compromise, Hank will keep the money until spring when the snow melts and the plane is discovered. However if there is any mention of the money as missing once this happens they will burn it. If the money is not mentioned then the cash gets split between them.

The plan seems simple and Hank’s wife Sarah warms to the idea after being initially sceptical, the fact that they have a child on the way that will not have to ever go without encourages her to go along with things. Things take a complicated turn when Hank and Jacob decide to return to the plane to plant a few thousand dollars which will throw off whoever finds the plane. Unfortunately a local man on a snowmobile crosses their path and Jacob in a panic kills him or so he thinks as he does not die and when he comes round Hank actually finishes him off. They cover it up by making it look like an accident. Jacob being unable to keep his mouth shut tells Lou who decides to blackmail Hank for his share ahead of schedule.

From here things get more and more complicated as cross leads to double cross and so on. All four main characters descend into paranoia and increasing desperation as they try and keep things quiet. Sarah becomes a Lady Macbeth type figure, advising Hank on the best way out of their predicament, which becomes more and more extreme. When the eventual owner of the money does show up it leads to more murder and an ending where the American dream becomes a tragedy.

A Simple Plan is a well told tale of greed and desperation in a desolate landscape. The way it is portrayed is stark and uncompromising. Nice people against a bleak setting gradually become as cold as the environment in which they live. The tension is racked up nicely and you genuinely sympathise with the characters, at first hoping they get away with it and then by the end thinking they deserve the misery that has befallen them. Raimi at this point was primarily known for his horror output and here he uses the techniques of the horror film with greed being the unseen monster. When violence occurs in the film it is quick and startling which adds to the shock that the audience feels. Moments like crows guarding the crashed plane attacking Hank or when he murders the thought dead Mr Pederson feel like they could have come from any horror film.

The film is well shot by Alar Kivilo and well scored by Raimi’s regular collaborator Danny Elfman. The performances are all top notch with Bill Paxton and Bridget Fonda both proving that they are amongst the most underrated of performers. Billy Bob Thornton’s performance as the childlike Jacob is perhaps his best role to date as he is the heart of the film and gradually becomes the figure that the audience sympathise with due to his shock at what is going on around him with the people he loves. Thorton ended up with a Best Supporting Actor nod at the Oscar’s in 1999 and Scott B Smith was nominated for a best adapted screenplay Oscar for adapting his own novel into a tight suspenseful script.

For all the critical acclaim and award nominations though, audiences didn’t show up when the film came out. It garnered a wide release and made a paltry 3.4 million on its first weekend. This ensured that it wasn’t in theatres long. It has since been acclaimed as a lost classic by those who have seen it; many consider it to be Sam Raimi’s best movie. If you liked the similar themed Shallow Grave then A Simple Plan is well worth checking out.

Trivia: Between 1994 and 1996, Ben Stiller was set to direct this film with Nicolas Cage to star. When Cage's salary began to affect the film's overall budget, Stiller walked away. The reins were then given over to John Dahl who later left the project to be replaced by director John Boorman. Meanwhile, Emma Thompson was considering the part of Sarah Mitchell but, after a while, declined.