A Simple Plan (1998)

My previous experience with Sam Raimi was limited to the first two Spider-Man entries, which didn't do much for me. Apart from those, he seems to be known primarily for horror, which, for all my indulgence in October, really isn't one of my preferred genres. But an esteemed Raimi crime drama/thriller, with no sci-fi or fantasy premises? That might be worth my time.

In keeping with the title, it has a simple setup: Three lower-class guys find a crashed private plane, hidden in thick snow in the Minnesota woods, with a dead pilot...and $4.4 million. Hank (Bill Paxton) wants to turn it over to the police, but his brother Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton in an Academy Award-nominated role) and Jacob's friend Lou (Brent Briscoe), who are neither sober at the moment nor smart at the best of times, outvote him. He persuades them to let him sit on the money until authorities find the plane, probably after the spring thaw, so they can determine whether anyone's looking for the money. But as a much smarter man once said, three may keep a secret if two of them are dead....

Lest you think it's all male stuff yet again, Bridget Fonda gets second billing as Hank's wife, whom he lets in on the secret despite telling Jacob and Lou not to tell anyone else. She's about equal in intelligence to Hank (i.e., average at best) but greedier, if only because she sees a rotten future for them all if they never use the money. It's kinda chilling when she whispers a treacherous scheme while holding her new baby in the hospital.

Hank, for his part, is motivated less by greed than by a desire to stay out of prison. Unfortunately, after some foolish mistakes, particularly by Jacob and Lou, his motivation makes little difference for how corrupt his actions are. Through him in particular, I think one of the greatest strengths of the film is its credible illustration of how a seemingly decent person may resort to a series of felonies in a short time under the right conditions.

With each crime or other mistake, the titular plan becomes less simple. You could make the case that they're always, always digging themselves deeper. In the end, the police (who don't seem especially bright themselves) never even find out who got the money, but the main characters all wish they'd never found it. How refreshing to have a "Crime doesn't pay" fable that leads to neither legal punishment nor improbable cosmic retribution.

Ordinarily, I don't hold stories in high regard when no character seems to have an IQ above 100. Here it works, partly because I can't be sure of my own hypothetical actions in the same situation. My compliments to writer Scott B. Smith, who got an Oscar nod for the screenplay but is known for little else.