Recently, I found a copy of this movie in an old box of home video releases and watched it for the first time. All I knew about the film was my recollection of a thumbnail sketch of the story and that it had received good reviews when it first came out, almost ten years ago. Watching the TV reviews again on a website archive (Gene Siskel reviewed it two months before his death, with Roger Ebert), I was reminded of the praise for the film's acting, pacing, and "foreboding" mood. Reading the reviews on this site, I enjoyed the insights that some of them, both positive and negative, had to offer. Unfortunately, too many of the reviews, often very skimpy, went way over the top one way or the other without making any serious attempt to explain why (the movie is neither a "masterpiece" nor a "disgrace") and got bogged down in lazy, sloppy, inapt comparisons (this is not "Fargo" or "Macbeth"), trivial hang-ups (whether a character behaved exactly as the reviewer would have liked or a body flew at exactly the right angle after being shot by a rifle), and tedious platitudes ("greed is bad," "money is the root of all evil").
I saw nothing to complain about in the writing or lead performances, maybe because they were built on a strong foundation of the book (I have not read it but it has received a lot of praise). Bill Paxton does a solid job. He looks and acts persuasively his "all-American boy-next-door" role. Bridget Fonda, as his soft-on-the-surface but hard-as-nails wife, plays a terrific scene of brutal honesty about her life and conveys a merciless, misguided, blinkered sense of intelligence. The character of Paxton's brother, played by Billy Bob Thornton, shows some depth, surprises, and touches that make it much more than a stereotypical portrayal of a "retard." There is smart, honest dialogue. Some examples are Fonda telling Paxton that he would not be suspected of wrongdoing "because he is so normal," various characters calling each other on their mistakes and illusions, and Thornton confiding under stress to Paxton uncomfortable facts about his growing up and their father's demise. Contrary to the negative reviews, the movie manages to make the characters' downward spiral into ever-more disastrous events seem convincing, through its well-done set-up and depiction of them. The characters make so many mistakes because of their limitations and because the situation they face is so new and unusual to them. Of course the movie exaggerates, but it is handled well and makes a point. Its mundane ending is an interesting commentary.
On the other hand, the negative reviews are right that the film's animal imagery, especially an early, noisy, ugly scene in the crashed airplane, comes across as heavy-handed and overdone. The tone is set well enough by the deeply unhappy, going-through-the-motions characters, grim events, and daily-grind, snowy-wilderness surroundings, without having to go to excess with the ear-piercing, carrion-foraging black birds. I suppose the intended message may be that the human beings in the story, although horrified by the flesh-eating birds, become little better than them in the end. Still, the symbolism in the movie feels clumsy and distracting, rather than seamlessly enhancing the story (maybe it was handled better in the book). At times, Paxton and Thornton do not seem very believable as brothers, though to some extent their incompatibility is the point. Some supporting characters and performances, particularly the dim-witted sheriff, are weak. Gary Cole is completely wasted in the film. And the pacing gets a little forced toward the end of the movie.
It makes me uncomfortable to read simpering, simplistic, one-sided reviews, long on mindless hype and boosterism, that give a seriously flawed movie an easy pass, make no attempt to come to grips with its problems or, worse, try to dump on anyone who points them out, as with the lazy, unintelligent flicking of the "not helpful" button on others. Such reviews offer little or nothing of value and only contribute to the impression that moviegoers are suckers. But it also bothers me to read hatchet-job reviews that become so self-indulgent in coming up with supposedly clever put-downs and in heaping on the vitriol that they show no appreciation for what the film does, or attempts to do, well in individual scenes and in its larger design. Sometimes they read as if they were based on preconceived, surface-level, gut-driven reactions formed without even watching the movie very well or at all, which can make them completely worthless and a waste of everyone's time. Unduly negative reviews can give as false an impression about what is on the screen as overly positive ones. Overall, A Simple Plan is a well-acted, well-written, well-paced movie with some real intelligence.
I saw nothing to complain about in the writing or lead performances, maybe because they were built on a strong foundation of the book (I have not read it but it has received a lot of praise). Bill Paxton does a solid job. He looks and acts persuasively his "all-American boy-next-door" role. Bridget Fonda, as his soft-on-the-surface but hard-as-nails wife, plays a terrific scene of brutal honesty about her life and conveys a merciless, misguided, blinkered sense of intelligence. The character of Paxton's brother, played by Billy Bob Thornton, shows some depth, surprises, and touches that make it much more than a stereotypical portrayal of a "retard." There is smart, honest dialogue. Some examples are Fonda telling Paxton that he would not be suspected of wrongdoing "because he is so normal," various characters calling each other on their mistakes and illusions, and Thornton confiding under stress to Paxton uncomfortable facts about his growing up and their father's demise. Contrary to the negative reviews, the movie manages to make the characters' downward spiral into ever-more disastrous events seem convincing, through its well-done set-up and depiction of them. The characters make so many mistakes because of their limitations and because the situation they face is so new and unusual to them. Of course the movie exaggerates, but it is handled well and makes a point. Its mundane ending is an interesting commentary.
On the other hand, the negative reviews are right that the film's animal imagery, especially an early, noisy, ugly scene in the crashed airplane, comes across as heavy-handed and overdone. The tone is set well enough by the deeply unhappy, going-through-the-motions characters, grim events, and daily-grind, snowy-wilderness surroundings, without having to go to excess with the ear-piercing, carrion-foraging black birds. I suppose the intended message may be that the human beings in the story, although horrified by the flesh-eating birds, become little better than them in the end. Still, the symbolism in the movie feels clumsy and distracting, rather than seamlessly enhancing the story (maybe it was handled better in the book). At times, Paxton and Thornton do not seem very believable as brothers, though to some extent their incompatibility is the point. Some supporting characters and performances, particularly the dim-witted sheriff, are weak. Gary Cole is completely wasted in the film. And the pacing gets a little forced toward the end of the movie.
It makes me uncomfortable to read simpering, simplistic, one-sided reviews, long on mindless hype and boosterism, that give a seriously flawed movie an easy pass, make no attempt to come to grips with its problems or, worse, try to dump on anyone who points them out, as with the lazy, unintelligent flicking of the "not helpful" button on others. Such reviews offer little or nothing of value and only contribute to the impression that moviegoers are suckers. But it also bothers me to read hatchet-job reviews that become so self-indulgent in coming up with supposedly clever put-downs and in heaping on the vitriol that they show no appreciation for what the film does, or attempts to do, well in individual scenes and in its larger design. Sometimes they read as if they were based on preconceived, surface-level, gut-driven reactions formed without even watching the movie very well or at all, which can make them completely worthless and a waste of everyone's time. Unduly negative reviews can give as false an impression about what is on the screen as overly positive ones. Overall, A Simple Plan is a well-acted, well-written, well-paced movie with some real intelligence.