Review of A Simple Plan (1998) by Jill A — 23 Apr 2009

Just watched this one again with my wife, and I had forgotten how very simply effective this movie is. Absolutely fantastic. I was talking with my wife about a mini-genre of movies we've recently discovered that we like to call Big Bag of Money movies.

Seems like a kinda long-standing archetype for movie plots where a group of people somehow get their hands on a great big bag of money and basically fight over the moral implications of what to do with it.

And it's not a small genre, either. Or a new one for that matter. Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Shallow Grave, Millions, Reservoir Dogs, etc. It's a story we've been seeing on screen for a long long time.

A Simple Plan is a movie in this genre that I think boils the story down to its most elemental, morality-tale, parable roots. The characters are so immediately likeable that you are on their side even when they're deciding to do the most evil things.

Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton put up two performances which I consider to be career bests for both of them. Billy Bob is hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time. His monologue about the girl he dated once in high school is the single most moving scene I've ever seen him perform.

It also helps that there's a matter-of-fact nature to the plot that makes each evil decision seem like it's the only reasonable choice to make, so as more and more horrible things happen, we don't blame our heroes.

It's thoroughly refreshing to me to see this again now after the studios have grown into what they are today, ten years later. Studios don't make this kind of movie anymore. Thrillers have become much more effects and spectacle driven.

But for all the spectacle and money spent on effects, it's amazing to me how much more suspenseful it is for me to watch a scene where I'm hanging on the edge of my seat because I don't know what the character's going to say.

Like the part in this movie where Billy Bob is forced to choose sides. It's just a conversation in a living room, but it put me in more suspense than most of the thrillers I've seen in the last 10 years.

Or the scene toward the end of the film where Paxton tries to load a gun. These are simple things that are imbued with an intense amount of suspense through top flight character work. Because we care about the characters, it's easy to keep us involved.

This is a really underappreciated movie, and as far as I'm concerned it's practically perfect.