A Simple Plan is a devilish morality play that has aged like a guilt-free conscience. I can practically feel director Sam Raimi and writer Scott Smith cackling just off-screen as they turn the screws on their characters. This movie has a black heart that pumps acid with each beat, getting darker and darker by the minute. A Simple Plan is so assured in its craft that it’s an absolute joy to go through the ringer alongside the desperate fools onscreen.
Those fools, such as it were, are played expertly by Bill Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton, Bridget Fonda, and Brent Briscoe. They represent variations of desperation and watching how those variations bounce off each other and reverberate throughout the movie is one of its great joys.
The plot, befitting the film’s title, is about as clean and…straightforward as a plot can be. Three guys find a downed airplane in the woods with a duffle bag full of cash. They take the cash and brace for the attached strings to come into play. It’s a pressure cooker scenario escalated to nigh-unbearable heights the deeper the characters sink into their fates. Hank, Jacob (Thornton), Lou (Briscoe), and Sarah (Fonda) have clean, easily definable attitudes toward the money that it makes any combo of them combustible.
Take Paxton’s Hank, a milquetoast clock-puncher with dreams of upward mobility that will likely always evade him. Hank is the kind of guy who naively thinks that if he does the things he’s supposed to, then everything will work out. Except it isn’t. His wife, Sarah (Fonda), shares his delusion, but the appearance of the money gives her a clearer vision of their life and where it’s current trajectory will take them. With a baby girl to raise, Hank’s aspirations crash head-on with the bleak reality of their situation. Throughout the movie Hank is reluctantly dragged along and any time he tries to assert control over his situation he ends up leaving dead bodies in his wake. Hank’s the worst kind of sap. Despite all evidence to the contrary he thinks he’s in control.
Jacob is a downtrodden loser, a man with no prospects. He’s also the most honorable and tragic character in the movie. Thornton’s performance is full of empathy for this guy who has been looked down upon for a long time. It’s a cruel twist of fate (and Smith’s ingenious plotting) that he’s the one who finds the money in the first place. Lou is purely motivated by greed. He has no long term plans and wants what’s his immediately. From the moment the money is found Hank, Sarah, and Lou’s brains are working overtime to get the money ASAP. Poor Jacob is a pawn in their game and in so far over his head. When he tries to go along with the others, all he ends up doing is making things worse.
That’s the rub. The idea of a better tomorrow is an illusion to these people. They just won’t know it until it’s too late. Smith’s story, both in novel form and onscreen, is perfectly calibrated. Every time a character has a clear idea of what their next move is, it’s immediately wrecked by consequences they were too short-sighted to spot. Going out to check on the fallen plan? Didn’t account for the sheriff to be there. Blackmail someone to get the upper hand? They’ll pull a shotgun on you. The cruelest reveal comes at the end, when it becomes abundantly clear (if it wasn’t already) that no one was ever going to get away with the money.
A Simple Plan is a tremendous thriller with a nasty sense of humor. The mix of darkness and laughs makes Sam Raimi a perfect fit as director. He keeps the film drop becoming a depressing slog, while giving it enough of an edge to linger. It’s part of what makes the movie hold up so well all these years later. And now the film has a release worthy of its quality courtesy of Arrow’s new 4KUHD and Blu-ray set. There are a few fun features looking back on the film and a host of previously available supplements, but the film itself is the star here.
