it's been a good long while since we had a good old fashioned thriller , where mostly everything goes right for the audience and wrong for the characters , but it's been even longer since i saw a thriller that actually * shock * cared for the characters , not merely judged them but actually allowed their human foibles , flaws , and strengths to emerge so radiantly . 
i'd saw that it's been at least a couple decades , even as far back to the great hitchcock thrillers , though i'm hardly comparing " a simple plan " to , say , " rear window " or " strangers on a train . " 
yet it's almost as good . 
it's simple , yet strangely complex , and astonishingly rewarding , because instead of moving from plot point to plot point , and merely laying out they-might-be-caught overtones , it instead concerns itself with the moral corruption and depths of greed that its protagonists can go to , all without ever judging them as either evil or even immoral . 
elegantly directed by sam raimi ( yes , the same ) , " a simple plan " concerns itself with the discovery of a crashed plane and within a bag full of millions of dollars by an upright , moderately financially stable working man ( bill paxton ) , his dim-witted brother ( billy bob thornton ) , and his drinking buddy ( brent briscoe ) . 
without anyone around , and the possibility that no one would come looking for it , the three debate and debate but finally reach the decision that yes , they will keep it , but until any authorities or possible owners of the cash come looking , and so they generally don't flaunt anything they don't want to flaunt , they'll keep it stored away in the custody of paxton . 
the possibilites of this circumstance are much diverse : a ) they could endlessly play cat and mouse with the authorities ; b ) they could try to fight off the rightful owners , who are either villainous or just ; or c ) they could fight amongst themselves . 
 " a simple plan , " though borrows a little from each of these . 
a little tiff with the cops here , a subplot involving an alleged fbi agent ( a chilling gary cole ) there ) , and a bit of inside feuding over here . 
but , as austin powers would say , that's not necessarily its bag ( baby ) . 
what i most admired about this film , and what makes this a far superior and unique thriller is that it's successfully able to have its cake and eat it too . 
it effectively involves some of the traditional thriller cliches , like the ones mentioned above , but at the same time , it involves itself more deeply with the way the characters become morally corrupt and what price they have to pay to have what they think is happiness in a black duffle bag . 
so while steps are taken to neatly cover things up , and these subsequent steps go miserably awry , the film choses to never loose the sight that in covering things up to the extent that these characters have to , they are slowly losing their souls and their humanity . 
in one early scene , paxton and thornton have to make a trip back to the plane to return some of the money so it doesn't look like it was all stolen ( not a bad idea ) , when thornton screws up ( as he does continuously throughout the movie ) , and paxton has to do some major covering-up ( read : homicide ) . 
instead of a quick murder and immeadiate hands-washing , raimi shows a lengthy , painful shot from a low-angle onto paxton's face as he tries to sift through his emotions and reach a conclusion . 
there's a similar shot afterwards of paxton watching the murder he's committing and taking in all the horror which is also wonderfully effective , but the previous shot is even better : more morally complex and more gut-wrenching . 
in short , probably the best piece of direction raimi's ever done , demonstrating once again that sometimes the simplest way to do something yields the best results ( for further proof , watch " persona " 's " sex scene " and witness what may be the best scene ingmar bergman's ever done ) . 
but the film hardly stops here ; it follows completely through and rarely loses sight of its characters humanity and the depletion thereof . 
yet it also moves from step to step in such a graceful method that we never feel like the film is merely stamping out the plot points of the story . 
when the time comes for paxton to start becoming selfish and thus diabolical ( with aid from his pregnant wife , played by bridget fonda , a pal to raimi ) , he does , and soon the horror of the situation is escalating to tragic heights . 
there's at least two grand shootouts , and at least one of them may be one of the greatest shootouts in cinema history , and when they arrive , they don't come with masochistic delight but with cringe-inducing horror . 
during the one , i was actually sinking into my chair , with the mantra " they can't do this , can they ? " 
streeming through my head . 
in fact , this film , which is getting many comparisons to the coen's [superior , but forget about it] " fargo , " has many similar moments of manic insanity , attributed to the major amount of subtlety and restraint with which the directors direct what , in other hands , would be over-the-top distractedness ( imagine , i suppose , robert rodriguez directing this . . . then 
again , after seeing the " evil dead " films , i'd hardly assume raimi would be able to pull something like this off , although there are moments of the film which are easily dubbed " raimi " moments , a rifle-shot notwithstanding ) . 
instead , raimi directs with maturity and a gentle touch , easily letting the story and characters co-exist , while still letting some of the more traditional raimi elements come out , like some offbeat comic touches . 
most particularly , billy bob thornton's character , jacob , is a brilliant creation . 
his dim-wittedness is often hilarious ( for most of the film , every line he uttered was greeted with howling laughter ) , but there's authenticity to the performance that strangely enough makes sure that we're not totally laughing at him . 
the chuckles he gets are not necessarily ones of full-condescension because thornton is so damn real . 
jacob's a multi-dimensional character , and while being stupid , we see that as not so much a flaw , but a strength to his character : his simplicity is endearing and many of the acts he commits are out of a strong inner strength and belief system , primarily towards the middle where his bud and co-conspirator begins to make some heavy waves concerning the money . 
the final third of the film spends much time with him , and many of the touches upon his character , not only by thornton but also by screenwriter scott b . smith ( adapting his own book , by the way ) are just great . 
i particularly admired a back story about an old high school girlfriend , told by thornton with such sincerity and acception that the cruel story is reversed to near-sweetness and further strength of his saddened character . 
thornton is absolutely brilliant in this performance , by far the best performance he's ever given and further proof that he's the best character actor in contemporary cinema ( if you don't believe me , go back and watch his wonderful performance in " primary colors , " a performance that would have been nominated for an oscar if this hadn't been in the same year ) because he's easily able to slip into a character , and make him completely and utterly believable . 
he brings so much weight to the film that , as it is with most character actors , it's difficult picturing anyone else in the role . 
the rest of the cast is great too , from paxton's declining working man to chelcie ross' amiable town sheriff . 
even fonda shows off her talents nicely . 
and if i had any complaints about the film , it's that the plot is almost too simplistic , and that at times , it seems too much like an exercise , like a cruel test on humanity that still pays attention to the humanity involved . 
and the occasional narration is , as it usually is , annoying ( narration should be used with extreme caution , especially when you're trying to set things up and/or express emotions - didn't raimi watch the first murder scene ? ) . 
and , the thing that can most usually go wrong with a movie , the ending is basically amiss . 
i won't reveal it , but it's way too cruel and too much of an outsider set-up , as if the appearance of a plane wasn't already too much of that anyway . 
for a film that deals so much and so intimately with the humanity of the characters involved , this is the wrong ending . 
imagine a character-controlled ending ; otherwise , it's like if in " crime and punishment " if the police had caught him instead of him breaking down and confessing . . . not that i'm at all comparing " a simple plan " to dostoevsky . 
the ending does work , despite my protestations , but to me , there was something incessantly nagging and unsatisfying about it ; but if you had no qualms and were happy as a clam with it , then just ignore me and go about your day . 
but despite my mere claims , make no mistake that i was completely and utterly edge of my seat throughout , and even sometimes curdling up by the situations that occured , not because of any kind of gore factor ( which is , thankfully for this , very minimal ) , but because the film places its characters in situations and gives them such painful things to overcome that i've frankly not seen much like it in quite awhile . 
at least not since the previous worthy hitchcockian masterpiece .