Product Description

THREE MEN ARE EMBROILED IN MISTRUST, MURDER AND INTRIGUE WHEN THEY FIND FOUR MILLION DOLLARS IN A CRASHED PLANE.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9551 in DVD
• Brand: PARAMOUNT HOME VIDEO
• Released on: 1999-06-22
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 121 minutes

Amazon.com
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

From The New Yorker
A sturdy attempt to do a contemporary, snowbound "Treasure of the Sierra Madre." Three ordinary guys-a married college man who has settled into a routine job (Bill Paxton), his slightly woolly-brained brother (Billy Bob Thornton), and the town drunk and screwup (Brent Briscoe)-discover $4.4 million in a downed airplane lodged in the snow. What to do with the cash? The picture becomes a study of the nasty effects of greed and of the weakness of civilization's bonds. Director Sam Raimi, who once made shockers like "The Evil Dead," works seriously, but the story is fairly predictable, and the small-town, upper-Midwest locale is dreary and limited (we miss the gold-toothed Mexicans from "Treasure"). The movie leaves the unfortunate impression that the characters tear one another apart because there isn't much else to do. With Bridget Fonda as a scrupulous wife hit hard by the lure of big bucks. Screenplay by Scott B. Smith, based on his own novel. -David Denby
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

A Simple Plan (1998)
Director: Sam Raimi
Cast: Bill Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton, Bridget Fonda, Brent Briscoe, Jack Walsh, Chelcie Ross, Becky Ann Baker, Gary Cole, Bob Davis.
Running Time: 121 minutes
Rated R for violence and language.

This is a diabolical tale about the wages of greed. Although it is played straight without intentional humor, the irony is so delicious at times that you might find yourself laughing. Jacob Mitchell (Billy Bob Thornton) is the one who begins to feel evil, and rightly so as the bodies begin to pile up. His presumably smarter brother Hank (Bill Paxton) feels mostly fear as he struggles to cover up one mishap after another. Their problems begin when they and Jacob's buddy Lou Chambers (Brent Briscoe) stumble onto a downed airplane in the woods covered with snow in which they find one dead person being feasted on by crows and a duffle bag full of hundred dollar bills. Lou, who might represent the common man, says, let's keep it. Hank, who could be rational man, says, whoa, this money belongs to somebody and besides we could get into trouble. We better turn it in. And Jacob, who is the natural man, sides with his buddy Lou. After all they're country poor and this is probably drug money that nobody is going to miss. And anyway, what can go wrong?

Well, as Ben Franklin observed a long time ago, `Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.' As they wait for spring to come and the plane to be discovered before they risk spending the money, the `simple plan' begins to unravel with horrific consequences. Thornton and Briscoe play country boys to perfection, and Paxton does a great job as a small town golden boy seriously compromised. Bridget Fonda plays Hank's pregnant wife, who turns out to be the brains (as it were) of the group. There are some very nice plot twists as the all too human emotions of the characters begin to crash into one another. Inevitably we have a morality tale in which the wages of sin are fully realized. Sam Raimi's ("The Evil Dead", "Spiderman) direction captures well the atmosphere of North Country America without any obvious straining for effect. He gets great mileage out of a few crows (actually some of them are ravens, I think) and a whole lot of snow. Scott B. Smith's script (from his novel) is clever and morally astute. The characterizations are excellent and the story psychologically satisfying. Particularly agreeable was the very sad, ironic end for Hank and his wife, who find that all the self-created hell they went through led them back to where they began, but without their souls. A dark message about greed and honesty is a topsy-turvey roller-coaster ride with beautiful cinematography and slick direction from horror-master Raimi. Not one for those who need a cheering-up session.

A Twisted Brilliant Thriller
Director Sam Raimi crafts this story from the best seller. Set in a cold, wintry rural landscape, Brothers Hank (smart accountant Bill Paxton) and Jacob (dim-witted Billy Bob Thornton), along with Jacob's equally dumb friend Lou (Brent Briscoe), find a downed plane full of four million dollars. The pilot is dead and no one else knows about it. Could it be drug money? Sounds simple. However, family, greed and common sense don't always mix and the story soon goes haywire. No need to give away anything else other than there is an unexpected body count and an ending that will shock. This is one of those sleeper hits that never fails to surprise and delight. Bridget Fonda costars as Paxton's wife who goes through her own metamorphosis.

Devastating portrait of how greed ruins men's souls
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.