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Good plan for a good flick
by CarlosC (movies profile)
Dec 7, 2005
3
of
5 people found this review helpful
"Do you ever feel evil?," social misfit Jacob Mitchell (Billy Bob Thornton) asks his more graceful and successful brother, Hank (Bill Paxton). The two have murdered, and covered-up their crimes with a compost of lies, to conceal $4M they found in a plane wreck, buried beneath the snows of a nature preserve. A tale of two brothers, A SIMPLE PLAN is adept at encapsulating its themes in eloquently simple lines. Jacob's chilling question crystallizes the difference between the brothers: Jacob may be a simpleton, but he is the only one capable of cutting to the situation's moral core. Without Hank's intellectuality, Jacob is not given to rationalization. In an earlier scene, Hank asks his wife, Sarah (Bridget Fonda), what she would do if she found so much money. The question, posed as a hypothetical, is the central question of the movie, and it is addressed, not only to Sarah, but also to us. Immediately, Sarah renounces all claims to the hypothetical money, asserting that she would never keep it. As if in anticipation of our own cop-out answers, the film shows us that what we say to reassure ourselves of our inherent goodness, in the abstract, is quite different from what we would do tactically in a moment of truth, as when Sarah sees Hank dump the cash out of a black trash-bag and quickly changes her tune. The nobler people seem at the outset of this movie, the greedier, and more hypocritical they become, at the end. PLAN's greatest strength is a Hitchcock-like effectiveness as a provocative moral and psychological thriller, bolstered by a disconcerting musical score by Danny Elfman, and the grounded cinematography of Alar Kivilo. The emphasis on setting, middle class underbelly social issues, and a greed-driven scheme may remind some viewers of the Coen Brothers' FARGO (1996). (The Coens were consulted by director Raimi on how to film in snow.) Like the Coens' film, PLAN also boasts of a very sharp script and a talented cast, chief among whom is Thornton, in a stand-out performance. He makes Jacob, a man of limited verbal skills, one of the year's most compelling characters on-screen. There are no time-outs for character-development in this movie, though; it affects "a simple plan" to pursue character-development concurrent with plot-development. Thus, the pacing is brisk: Almost as soon as the Mitchell brothers and a friend (Brent Briscoe) find the crash cash, the blessing becomes a curse. It bloodies the snowy fields. Joint joy turns to group grief, suspicion, and distrust. A white-wash, the snow, covers everything. In black-and-white contrast, ebony birds (crows) signal festering rot. One brother concocts A SIMPLE PLAN. The other constructs a simple question: "Do you ever feel evil?" You almost never do. Until, it is too late. (Carlos Colorado) |
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