When Hank (Bill Paxton), Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton) and Lou (Brent Briscoe) find more than $4 million inside a crashed plane, they quickly come up with the plan to keep the money safe until the plane has been found by others and the dust has settled. Hank, the moralist among them, initially resists, but is soon won over by the argument that the money is probably from a drug deal gone bad, and has no traceable owner. He agrees to a three-way split, but only if they follow his simple wait-and-see plan. But Hank will soon learn that no one behaves in the way they agreed to. Lou, in deep financial debt, wants his share sooner rather than later and Jacob wants the money to renovate his parent's farm. The trust between the partners dissolves slowly, and when an FBI agent comes into town, looking for a crashed plane, Hank and his partners realize that they are in over their heads.
The comparison between A Simple Plan and the Coen Brothers' Fargo is all too easy to make- both are slices of life about outlandish crimes, the effect of greed, and average Joe felons in deep water, and both take place in beautiful, but barren snowscapes, but they are very different in tone. Fargo is decidedly comedic, though it is deadpan, but A Simple Plan is darker, with something real and sinister around every turn. The film goes from one blunder to the next, until the increasingly paranoid subjects have managed to dig themselves into a very, very deep hole. A Simple Plan is simple- there are few special effects (not counting a few instances of animals poking around), but in one scene director Sam Raimi goes over the top with a domestic bloodbath, and it's just as horrifying as Billy Bob Thornton's constant grinning through his prosthetic overbite. The film is as much a thriller as it is an affecting story about trust and brotherhood. As things progress, conjugal love gives way to furious disappointment, small-town assurance turns into paranoia, and family ties weave together to make a deadly trap.
The comparison between A Simple Plan and the Coen Brothers' Fargo is all too easy to make- both are slices of life about outlandish crimes, the effect of greed, and average Joe felons in deep water, and both take place in beautiful, but barren snowscapes, but they are very different in tone. Fargo is decidedly comedic, though it is deadpan, but A Simple Plan is darker, with something real and sinister around every turn. The film goes from one blunder to the next, until the increasingly paranoid subjects have managed to dig themselves into a very, very deep hole. A Simple Plan is simple- there are few special effects (not counting a few instances of animals poking around), but in one scene director Sam Raimi goes over the top with a domestic bloodbath, and it's just as horrifying as Billy Bob Thornton's constant grinning through his prosthetic overbite. The film is as much a thriller as it is an affecting story about trust and brotherhood. As things progress, conjugal love gives way to furious disappointment, small-town assurance turns into paranoia, and family ties weave together to make a deadly trap.