Cody Hamman has Film Appreciation for the 1998 thriller A Simple Plan, and so does director Sam Raimi.
Sam Raimi – who qualifies for the description of “legendary filmmaker”, as far as I’m concerned – recently revealed which of his own films is his favorite... and a lot of fans might find his answer surprising. It wasn’t his career-starting classic The Evil Dead or either of its increasingly comedic sequels, Evil Dead II or Army of Darkness. It wasn’t his highly regarded comic book adaptation Spider-Man, or the even more well regarded follow-up Spider-Man 2. It wasn’t his first action adventure movie, Darkman, or his horror comeback Drag Me to Hell. It’s a movie that doesn’t have any of his trademark visual quirkiness. The 1998 crime thriller A Simple Plan.
Raimi has said that he didn’t bring his usual style to A Simple Plan because the screenplay by Scott B. Smith, based on Smith’s novel of the same name, was so strong that he didn’t have to do any visual tricks to make it more interesting or entertaining. He just had to bring the scenes on the page to the screen in the most straightforward and effective way possible. The result is a great film. I wouldn’t name it as my favorite Sam Raimi movie, as I have a greater appreciation for the stylish and quirky films referenced above... but it is a great movie nonetheless. I can understand why Raimi is so proud of it.
Filmed during a snowy Wisconsin and Minnesota at the start of ‘98, A Simple Plan stars Bill Paxton as Hank Mitchell, a guy who has a good life when we first meet him. He has a good job at a feed mill, his librarian wife Sarah (Bridget Fonda) is about to give birth to their first child, they have a good relationship. He’s happy. But by the tone of the film and the sound of Hank’s voice during his opening narration, you can tell he’s not going to be happy anymore by the end of the 121 running time. He may not ever be happy again once the movie is over.
Things take a bad turn when Hank, his brother Jacob (Paxton's One False Move co-star Billy Bob Thornton), and Jacob’s friend Lou (Brent Briscoe) follow Jacob’s dog Mary Beth into the woods when she jumps out of his truck to chase a fox. In the forest, they find a small puddle jumper plane crashed with the pilot dead at the controls and a bag containing $4.4 million in $100 bills in the back. Hank’s immediate reaction is that they need to alert the authorities. But Jacob and Lou’s reaction is that they have just become instant millionaires. It’s the American dream in a gym bag! They want to keep the money for themselves and start spending it. Hank tries to talk them into a middle ground. He’ll keep the money and sit on it until spring. They’ll wait for someone else to find the plane – and if there’s no mention of the missing money in the media when the plane is located, they’ll split it up and go on with their lives. It's a simple plan that proves very difficult to carry out.
The problem is, neither Jacob or Lou is very bright or patient. Jacob obviously has some mental disabilities, but Lou is just a mouthy idiot, so dim that he gets insulted that Hank uses fancy words he doesn’t understand, like “insinuating”. So both of them cause problems and stress for Hank well before spring arrives. When Hank tells Sarah about the money, she dives right into a criminal scheming mindset and starts making suggestions for how Hank should navigate the situation. There’s always a brand new problem to deal with, and it doesn’t take long for a body count to start rising. Characters who started out as opportunistic thieves soon become murderers. There’s also the question of who the money belongs to, how they raised it... and whether or not any of the pilot’s associates are going to show up looking for it. Of course, they do. And in the end, A Simple Plan can be primarily described as a tragedy.
This is a movie that has such dark and sad events in it, they're likely to stick with you for a long time after you watch it. It's a good story, but it's definitely not a feel-good movie. The Evil Dead is a horrific movie about demonic possession where everyone seems to have died by the time the end credits start rolling, but it still manages to leave the viewer in a better mood than this one does.
A Simple Plan isn’t a film you hear get talked about nearly as much as the likes of the Evil Deads, the Spider-Mans, or Darkman, but it's well written, well directed (even without Raimi's usual camera tricks), and the cast members delivered some incredible performances. If you haven’t seen it, Sam Raimi highly recommends that you seek it out and watch what he feels is his finest work.
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