A Simple Plan

You probably didn't think a movie involving money, murder and mountains of snow could get any darker than Fargo. And then comes A Simple Plan. Four years in the making (The original cast: Brad Pitt in the lead, Ben Stiller directing, which would have been disastrous), this is one of the rare examples of a book getting justice on the big screen. Based on Scott Smith's fantastic 1993 book (Thank you, Lisa Kendall, for bringing it to my attention all those years ago), A Simple Plan is expertly acted, perfectly paced, and as dark as Trent Reznor and Robert Smith's wardrobes combined. A note to the squeamish: Stay home. Remember the wood chipper scene in Fargo? There is one scene here that brought similar groans from the audience.

Bill Paxton is Hank, a regular guy with a good education who works at a seed plant. While out with his brother Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton, in a piece of inspired casting) and Jacob's drinking buddy Lou (Brent Briscoe), the three stumble upon a downed airplane buried in the snow. Inside the plane is the dead pilot, plus a duffel bag filled with just under $4.5 million in cash. To Lou and Jacob, this is a godsend. Neither of them is employed, and their minds are going a million miles an hour at how to spend this money. They assume it's drug money and no one will miss it.

Hank, the rational one, at first wants to turn it in. But after some small persuasion from the other two, comes up with a plan: Hank will keep the money until spring. Once the authorities find the plane and no one is looking for the money, they split it three ways and leave town. Hank makes Lou swear not to tell his wife, and Lou makes Hank swear not to tell his wife Sara (Bridget Fonda). Of course, they both tell their wives. But Lou's wife turns out to be a harmless confession. Sara, on the other hand, starts out saying she would turn the money in, but soon becomes more calculated than the three men in keeping the plan in one piece.

At this point, the sore points in the relationships among the three men become exploited by all sides. Thornton's Jacob is kind of dim witted, and not so secretly resents Hank and his success. Lou thinks Hank is a condescending, arrogant snob, just as Hank thinks Lou is a brash drunk and a bad influence on Jacob. Lou is more of a brother to Jacob than Hank in a way, simply because Jacob and Lou are both losers. Both Lou and Jacob need the money as soon as possible, and soon all three are blackmailing each other for either silence or cash. That's when it gets ugly.

You'd never know from the look of it, but A Simple Plan was directed by Sam Raimi, of Evil Dead, Darkman and The Quick and the Dead fame (or infamy, depending on your point of view). This is his most restrained effort, and it also turns out to be his best, putting him in a class of directors he previously would never have been considered the peers of. Paxton gives his best performance in years, using subtlety where he would usually go over the top. Thornton, in an outfit that rivals his getup in Oliver Stone's U-Turn on the "How Ugly Can I Make Myself" scale, is fantastic. Don't be surprised if he gets a Supporting Actor nod. Bridget Fonda surprised me as Sara. I didn't think she had the edge to pull off Sara's ice cold precision in executing her master plan, but she did quite well.

The thing that set A Simple Plan above, say, Shallow Grave, another movie that centers around three people turning on each other when money gets involved, is the extra depth that the characters here have. It isn't just about the money. The motives of these characters are rooted in events that took place years ago, and that makes things even more complicated than they normally would be. And I can't stress the pacing enough. These characters moved in real time. They thought and said things that real people would say. Nothing was rushed, nothing was dragged out. It all seemed to fit perfectly.

Because of its limited release (80 theaters nationwide and counting, according to the last box office list I saw), this will probably get overlooked in the year of Private Ryan, Truman and Shakespeare. The irony is that this is the best movie Paramount put out all year (see Snake Eyes, Hard Rain, A Night at the Roxbury. I'm not including joint deals with Dreamworks like Private Ryan and Deep Impact), and for some reason they chose to bury it. I'll never understand the studio system, I guess. but as long as they make movies like this at least once or twice a year, I shouldn't complain.

Correction

Paramount, it turns out, is not burying this movie. It opens wide this Friday. I guess they were holding off until A Civil Action and Thin Red Line went wide.