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Sam Raimi was, at one time, mostly known for horror. Of the novels of Scott B. Smith you would think he’d make a movie of, maybe The Ruins would make more sense. That said, A Simple Plan reminds you that he once lived in the same house as the Coen Brothers when all were new to Hollywood. That said, he makes this movie all his own.

Wright County, Minnesota mostly has a feed mill and lots of snow. Hank Mitchell (Bill Paxton) and his wife Sarah (Bridget Fonda) are two of the few college-educated people there. Hank’s brother Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton) and his friend Lou Chambers (Brent Briscoe) are closer than the two actual brothers are. This is tested when the men find a crashed plane and $4.4 million dollars. Hank wants to turn it in. Jacob and Lou change his mind, saying he should keep it until the snow melts and if no one brings up the money when the plane is found, they can keep it.

They all agree to not discuss the money with anyone except that Hank tells Sarah. She thinks they should take some money back to the plane. On the way, Hank and Jacob are surprised by a farmer on a snow vehicle. In the heat of the moment, they kill him and send his body and vehicle into the icy river.

Sarah believes that the money was a ransom for a kidnapped heiress from Michigan, who was abducted by two brothers by the names of Stephen and Vernon Bokovsky. She tells him that there’s no victim in the crime now, as one of the brothers had to be the dead body in the plane. The plan falls to pieces though when Lou demands his money. He’s been spending too much and might lose his truck. He threatens to go to the cops. Sarah says that they should kill him, a shocking moment as she’s just given birth to their first child.

Sarah says that they should frame Lou for the farmer’s murder by getting him drunk, making him confess and recording it. Jacob is upset that he has to betray his friend and it almost all goes wrong when Lou pulls his gun. It ends up with Lou and his wife Nancy dead and Hank having to spin the story to the police of what exactly happened. The next problem is that Jacob mentioned the plane, so Sheriff Carl Jenkins (Chelcie Ross) makes Hank show him where it is, bringing along FBI agent Neil Baxter (Gary Cole).

This is probably where you should stop reading if you want to watch this movie.

Baxter is, of course, Vernon Bokovsky. Somehow, Hank is able to kill him but now Sheriff Jenkins is also killed. That means that another story has to be told. And that’s when Jacob tells him that he’s tired. He’s either going to kill himself or force his brother to kill him, creating an alibi so that Hank can live free. It turns out that when he tells the story to the real government agents, they tell him all of the money was marked. He burns it in his fireplace, realizing that he will always be haunted by what he has done.

Paxton and Thornton had been scheduled to be in this movie for years. John Boorman was the original director and the film got cancelled. Neither believed they would ever be in the film but luckily, it all came together. This was one of the first movies where Raimi worried more about the performances of his actors instead of the action of the shots.

I miss Bill Paxton. I realize I never knew him outside of the roles he played but I feel like some part of me — I know it’s strange — knew he was a good man. In this, Hank is an ordinary person who somehow becomes a level of evil that he had no idea that he was capable of. Thornton also plays a role that any other actor would treat as a message part. His diminished intelligence is just who he is; he has other smarts that somehow make up for his lack of intelligence.