While nobody does dumb like the Coen brothers, A Simple Plan's director Sam Raimi and writer Scott B. Smith have crafted an accomplished imitation, even if they lack the perversely dark humour of their inspiration.
The three protagonists, brothers Hank (Bill Paxton), Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton) and buddy Lou (Brent Briscoe) really don't seem to have a clue as they lurch from one crisis to another in a doomed attempt to cover their tracks (both literal and figurative) and preserve their claim to the $4.4 million they discovered in a downed airplane. Lou is most eager to take the money and run, while Hank has ethical concerns, "You work for the American Dream. You don't steal it." Jacob, caught between his best buddy Lou and his only brother Hank, is not only the most intellectually challenged of the three, but also the most tormented. Billy Bob Thornton does a remarkable job, completely dissolving into the role in order to convey his character's pain with subtlety and pathos, avoiding bathos and sentimentality at every turn.
Raimi's direction is confident and assured. In Hitchcockian fashion, he puts the camera in just the right spot scene after scene, giving us a bird's eye view of the action. With a masterfully quiet intensity, Raimi builds the tension in several key scenes until we, like the characters, are feeling edgy and disoriented. In addition to Thornton's excellent work, the acting is solid, though Bridget Fonda, as Hank's manipulative and conniving wife Sarah, is the least convincing of the group.
A Simple Plan wears its influences confidently on its sleeve. There is Wallace Stevens poetry to be found in the many eerie shots of carrion-eating crows perched in predatory ebony relief above the chalk white snow-mantled action of the film:
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
The story-line is a brumal adaptation of The Treasure of Sierre Madre, itself a dusty and brilliant retelling of the biblical parable of the thieves. Furthermore, the cinematography is an obvious paean to the snow-bound classic Fargo (director Raimi apparently consulted the Coen brothers before attempting to shoot the film's wintry scenes). Lastly, the relationship between Jacob and Hank resurrects that of George and Lennie in Of Mice and Men.
While the student does not surpass the teacher, A Simple Plan certainly deserves comparison with its many progenitors and influences.
