A critic for a prestigious magazine recently began his
review of "Enemy of the State" by speculating that "there's a
bomb ticking inside each of us waiting for the right
opportunity to set itself off." Psychologists and historians
have long told us the same thing in similar ways: that
civilization is just a thin veneer for a torrent of violence that
lurks beneath each of us. Another expression popular with
those who like to think pessimistically about the human
condition is, "There's larceny in all of our hearts." The most
outwardly law-abiding person will participate in a criminal act
if the reward is great enough and the chances of punishment
meager. What would you do if you found a ten-dollar bill in
the street? Turn it in to the police station, which is the only
legal way to handle the situation? Sure you would. What if
you found four million dollars on a deserted country road?
You could always keep it, rationalizing that it's probably only
drug money and that you're not stealing from a poor, honest
Joe. Then again, if it's drug money, you might think twice:
maybe the Mob is involved and the last thing you want to do
is become tracked by ruthless gangsters. Speculate on yet
another situation. You find four million dollars, you're willing
to take a chance that you can get away with the theft, but two
other guys are with you at the time of the discovery. Now,
there's the rub. It's no secret that many, if not most criminals
who get caught are tracked down because somebody
squealed for one reason or another. How do you know your
pals will be able to keep quiet? How do you know they won't
gang up against you in order to split the dough 50-50 instead
of dividing it into three neat piles? Or that they can keep
their big mouths shut and keep even their wives in the dark?
In "A Simple Plan," a psychological thriller directed against
type by cult horror maven Sam Raimi ("The Evil Dead,"
"Dead by Dawn," "Maniac Cop"), three friends do indeed find
over four million dollars in a newly discovered plane wreck, a
strike which obviously changes their lives for the worst in
ways they should have anticipated. The most rational,
intelligent, and educated of the three, Hank (Bill Paxton),
immediately smells a rat. Realizing that his two accomplices
are his slow-witted, unhappy brother, Jacob (Billy Bob
Thornton) and the town's loudmouth drunk, Lou (Brent
Briscoe), you don't wonder that he wants to turn the money in
and, failing that, to keep it safely hidden away from the other
two for several months.
Slow moving at first, "A Simple Plan" grows steadily in
tension as director Raimi, working with an intricate script from
Scott B. Smith, continually raises the ante. The film is
replete with Hitchcockian devices, principally with the
schemes of a flock of black birds, some of whom are waiting
to get back to the meal they are making of a dead man's
eyes, others pecking at each other as metaphor for the fate
that awaits the newly minted criminals. Raimi is eager to
show humankind's corruptibility, as Hank--an upright guy
whom one of his buddies accuses of having a stick up his
rear end--succumbs to greed. Surprisingly, the most ethical
character of all, Hank's wife Sarah (Bridget Fonda), becomes
the leading proponent of a plan to keep the money despite
her insistence that she and her husband are doing jes' fine
on what they are living on. Even Hank--an intuitive person
who at the beginning of the story describes his good fortune
in following his father's formula for happiness--becomes
overcome by avarice. After all, doesn't he already have what
he needs to be content--a good wife, a fine job, and friends
and neighbors who like and respect him?
True enough, but then just as necessity is the mother of
invention, so is invention the mother of necessity. We got
along fine before we had computers and cell phones, but try
living without them now. Hank was doing dandy before he
discovered the 4 mil, but of course now he absolutely must
have it, even if keeping it will result in more bodies strewn
about the snowy countryside than Shakespeare manufactured
for his Elizabethan stage.
Bridget Fonda looks younger than she's appeared in years
and is persuasive as the good wife who, having 44,000
hundred-dollar bills poured across her living room table
decides that she can no longer live decently on her
husband's income. She's had it with going to restaurants
only on special occasions, skipping appetizers, and then
coming home for dessert. Billy Bob Thornton projects the
picture of unhappiness, a guy with a silly rug covering a pea-
sized brain who has never kissed a girl and thinks that even
a million dollars cannot help him to...well, you know the old
joke. Bill Paxton, as usual, is Mr. Nice Guy who is
debauched by dough which turns out, as they say, to be the
root of all evil.
All in all "A Simple Plan" is a well-made film, a thinking
person's thriller which eschew Sam Raimi's usual graphic
gore in favor of the playing out of a metaphoric chess game.
Julius Caesar would have enjoyed the way the three guys
and a gal play the game of divide and rule, a quartet laid low
by greed, envy, sloth, and a big mouth.
Rated R. Running Time: 121 minutes. (C) 1998
Harvey Karten
Copyright © 2000 Harvey Karten
