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DVD Tuesday: A Simple Plan + the Love of Blood Money = Disaster
Billy Bob Thornton and Bill Paxton in A Simple Plan courtesy Paramount
Last week it seemed that everything was conspiring to remind me of A Simple Plan: seeing the trailer for the Coen brothers' upcoming No Country for Old Men (based on the Cormac McCarthy novel), stumbling across Stephen King's rave review of Scott B. Smith's second novel, The Ruins, having an argument about what The Bible says is the root of all evil. So rather than ignore the signs and portents, it's my DVD Tuesday pick.
Directed by Sam Raimi and based on Smith's debut novel, A Simple Plan is a terrific example of what may be my favorite kind of thriller, the kind where someone makes a mistake that snowballs until he or she has lost everyone and everything that matters, and all efforts to make things right just make them worse. It's the quintessential noir plot, and while the poor, put-upon victim of cruel fate seems fated to get trapped in some cosmic web, the fact is he or she consistently — masochistically, it often seems — makes exactly the wrong decision, which transforms it from the afflictions of Job into something more psychologically interesting.
Midwestern brothers Hank and Jacob Mitchell (Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton, before he got all weird and scrawny) have both stayed in the small, semirural community where they were raised, but otherwise their lives have diverged. Hank went to college, became an accountant, got married and bought a small house with his wife, Sarah (Bridget Fonda). Jacob, who's mildly mentally challenged, stayed with their parents on the failing family farm; after their deaths, the farm was sold and he became an unkempt near-recluse whose only friend is mean, white-trash drunk Lou. Hank loathes Lou and doesn't spend much time with Jacob, but it's just his luck to be with both of them when he stumbles across a small plane crashed in a patch of isolated woods. There's a gym bag full of money in the hold — $4.4 million — and the pilot is long dead, so they decide to keep the money; after all, they tell themselves, whoever it belonged to clearly didn't come by it legally. Hank has a plan that will keep them from getting caught, and it starts with telling no one, doing nothing with the cash for a year and then leaving town to spend it. Naturally, Lou tells his girlfriend (who is, if anything, even dumber and trashier than he is), Jacob becomes fixated on buying the one thing Hank insists he can't have — the Mitchell farm — and the seeds of suspicion take root in the fertile soil of personal enmity, class resentment, and alcohol-fueled paranoia.
Amazingly enough, Raimi's bleak, bloody movie is actually a little less dark than Smith's original novel. But it's plenty dark enough, and Paxton (who's finally found the success he deserves in TV's Big Love) and Thornton, who first worked together in the similarly themed One False Move (1992), are phenomenal together. Fonda's metamorphosis from supportive, pregnant spouse to small-town Lady Macbeth is just plain chilling. So check it out and remember the doomed loser's motto: "Fate, or some mysterious force, can put the finger on you or me for no good reason at all." — Detour (1945)
Things to consider:
What's your favorite type of thriller and why? Examples?
Send your movie questions to FlickChick.
See Maitland McDonagh and Ken Fox review this week's new flicks on the Movie Talk vodcast.
Hear Maitland on the weekly podcast TV Guide Talk.
Previously in DVD Tuesday:
Taxi Driver
Renaissance
Blowup
Hot Fuzz
300
Ace in the Hole
Eyes Without a Face
Apocalypto
Citizen Kane
La Jetée
Gone in 60 Seconds (1974)
Bob le Flambeur
Near Dark
Perfect Blue
Pan's Labyrinth
Les Girls
The Girl Who Knew Too Much
The Queen
Expresso Bongo
I'm Not Scared
Shocking Grindhouse Double Bill! — Scanners and The Candy Snatchers
Don't Look Now
Re-Animator
Casino Royale
http://community.tvguide.com/thread.jspa?threadID=800073953#comments">Pi
The Prestige
13 Tzameti
The Departed
Suspiria
Kiss and Make Up
Kiss Me Deadly
The Long Good Friday
What Alice Found
The Devil's Backbone
The Descent
The Devil Wears Prada
Pandora's Box
The Thief and the Cobbler
Nashville
Panic in the Streets/Jack Palance Interview
The Pusher Trilogy
Scarface
Slither
Sunset Blvd.
In Cold Blood
Brick
Also: This week's new DVD releases
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Aug 27, 2007 6:31 PM
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A Simple Plan is so good. I saw it when it first came out, in a virtually empty theater. It deserved a lot more attention than it got. Raimi is best known for his genre films, but this one is amazingly well-done, and so unnervingly quiet most of the time. It's an example of one of my favorite types of thrillers: the kind where regular people end up in some extraordinary situation, way over their heads, with no good way out.
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Aug 28, 2007 1:29 PM
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I read the book, then after several years watched the movie without realizing I had already read the book. Maitland is correct, the book is much bloodier but very good. Scott Smith is a terrific author!
I also liked the forementioned One False Move. A terrific tale of a good cop straying to the dark side set in a small rural midwestern area. Great stuff!
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Aug 28, 2007 3:02 PM
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My favorite kind of thriller? Jeez... another broad category!
I love the Hitchcock-Man-on-the-Run thrillers like North by Northwest, The Wrong Man and The 39 Steps. Or even when the tables are turned and it's the guilty being chased like in M.
And I am a sucker for those mystery & sex thrillers like Sea of Love, Body Heat, Play Misty for Me, Body Double and Wild Things (I know, I know).
I also like comedic thrillers where there is comedy, but lives are endangered. Like Outrageous Fortune, Charade or Nadine. Some may not call them thrillers, but this category is so wide!
And of course there are those crime/police thrillers. They have the biggest range of all from Ronin to Diva and from The French Connection to Double Indemnity.
Also love the political thrillers like The Parallax View, The Conversation, Z, The Ipcress File and No Way Out (yeah I know it's not popular around here, but hey, I even think U.S. Marshals is stronger than The Fugitive. Blasphemy!).
How about those just weird thrillers like Dead Ringers, Videodrome and the sadly overlooked eXistenZ. Thank god for David Cronenberg!
SO many came to mind while I began this list. I can't wait to see all the ones I forgot in everyone else's posts!
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Aug 28, 2007 3:39 PM
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I have a tendency to prefer noir thrillers like A Simple Plan - the movie that made Sam Raimi a star.
That can be anything from The Maltese Falcon to Blood Simple, so there's a wide range just within the subgenre.
I also like weird thrillers [Big Trouble in Little China, for example] and espionage/political thrillers, which can range from things like The Ipcress File to The Bourne Trilogy.
Besides the obvious reasons [like the adrenaline rush and the opportunity for a larger-than-life hero - or a smaller-than-life one as in the Harry Palmer series], I like that thrillers are generally based around the idea that people can do extraordinary things when placed in extraordinary situations.
In the case of Big Trouble in Little China, for example, the hero is really Dennis Dun's sidekick character, while Harry Palmer [The Ipcress File, Funeral in Berlin, The Billion Dollar Brain] is something of a coward and pragmatist who will do whatever it takes to get the job done - and it's precisely because he's a coward that his ability to survive is so impressive, since he keeps getting into situations that he would normally avoid like the plague.
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Aug 28, 2007 4:18 PM
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I saw A Simple Plan and it's one of those movies I remember in images, more than in its entirety. I'm not sure why. I think I prefer psychological thrillers the most - or ones leaning towards the supernatural. I really do love The Manchurian Candidate. I liked both versions of it actually - they're so different in some way. I also like movies that skirt the edge of horror but don't quite cross over like The Others. I rewatched Charade not too long ago. I do love that movie. One my top ten list of great movies of all time (for me) is Vertigo - one of those movies I never tire of seeing. North by Northwest is another. The best movie of 'the mistakes make my life go out of control' type I've seen in recent is The Lookout. Everything from Jeff Daniels superb acting to a wonderfully character driven plot made that movie one of my recent favorites.
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Aug 28, 2007 5:22 PM
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I guess I forgot to answer the "why" part of the question. I just get so wrapped up in thinking of movies sometimes, I forget myself.
I like thrillers for different reasons. Mainly, it's like a roller-coaster. You can't stop the wheels and are taken on a ride of adventure and intrigue. Usually, you meet a few memorable people along the way (Blue Velvet, I am looking in your direction).
Usually, in the end, the villain is vanquished, the hero has cleared their name and the roller-coaster comes to a stop back where it began at a quiet standstill. And just like the best rides, the best movies can be ridden again and again without getting old. The surprises may be gone, but the characters, atmosphere and sense of danger remain.
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Aug 28, 2007 5:58 PM
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