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Sam Raimi
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SATURDAYS
SERENA DONADONI
Special to The Jewish News
, -)
Above right:
Billy Bob Thornton,
Bridget Fonda and
Bill Paxton. in
`A Simple Plan."--
A Simple Plan" goes astray.
A Simple Plan is a fairly simple and
involving thriller until it develops
airs — solemn, searching airs, as if
trying to do a Farmer's Almanac edi-
tion of Chekhov.
Scott B. Smith adapted his novel,
reverently, and Sam Raimi directed
the story about three yokels in a
small, wintry, very Midwestern town.
Chasing a fox through the snowy
woods, they find a smashed airplane
containing a corpse and a bag with
more than $4 million in cash.
What to do? Continuance of the
film would argue that they keep the
money.
The cash is kidnap loot, the corpse
one of the unlucky crooks. At first
resisting taking the treasure haul is
Hank (Bill Paxton), who is "smart" —
a farm boy who went to college,
though he still clerks in a feed and
grain store. Hank has thought himself
a happy man, with a lovely wife (Brid-
get Fonda) and a baby on the way.
Unhappy is brother Jacob (Billy
Bob Thornton), who has stringy
dweeb hair and the stunned look of
trying to mentally fuse an I with a Q.
Jacob is a simple soul who loves the
simple plan — to keep the money in
hiding until the coast is clear. Also
keen for it is his moronic and alco-
holic best friend, Lou (Brent Briscoe),
whose life illustrates the deep kinship
between "mess" and "misery"
Hank gets to hide the stash but, of
course, such a simple plan must go
wrong. Unlike the usual heist movie,
in which an elegantly knitted criminal
scheme unravels in one devastating
detail or oversight, this is a bad-luck,
dumb-idea movie in which a foolish
plan fouls up repeatedly.
Inevitably there are violent deaths,
making those in Fargo seem richly
complex and historically resonant.
Paxton has become a sturdy and
capable but dull leading man, OK as
an ordinary guy out of his shallow
depth, yet almost blank as a mirror
of moral reckoning. Thornton does
better as Jacob, the busted toilet of
life's little dreams.
Director Raimi made his rep as an
extreme stylist of horror comedies. He
has gone from volatile excess and
brazen, giddy payoffs to a tedious
meditation on the gutless and guilty.
It is hard to make a story light up
when it's about dim bulbs. Inside this
morbid blunder party we can sense a
comedy about lives of quiet despera-
tion, struggling to get out, then
dying with a wheeze. Rated R. **
— Reviewed by David Elliott,
Copley News Service
I is taken two decades, but film-
maker Sam Raimi is finally get-
ting some respect. Raimi, who
grew up in Franklin, Mich.,
made his name in horror films remark-
able for their dazzlingly inventive cam-
erawork and off-beat sensibility.
But even though he's built a sizable
cult following, Raimi is finally begin-
ning to receive mainstream acclaim
for his latest film, A Simple Plan,
which graced a number of year-end
best-of lists.
Although A Simple Plan, opening
today, is in many aspects a horror
film, it is decidedly different from
what Raimi has done before.
A character-driven story of two
brothers who find millions of dollars
in ransom money in a downed air-
plane near their snowbound small
town, the film follows the moral rami-
fications of what happens when they
conspire to keep the money.
Raimi spoke via telephone from
New York City, where he was shooting
scenes for his next foray into main-
stream filmmaking.
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RESTAURANT
JN: The style of A Simple Plan, which
is very basic and direct, is very differ-
ent from your previous films. Did you
feel this approach best suits this type
of story?
SR: The movies I make are usually
screaming to entertain loudly with
great insecurity, the camera racing
around trying to entertain as much as
possible. But I had so much confi-
dence in the script and these actors
that I felt that the only choice for me
was to put the camera not in the most
exciting or dramatic places but in the
proper place and really allow the
actors to tell the story.
JN: Based on newspaper clippings that
characters in the movie read, it seems
as if A Simple Plan takes place some-
where in the Thumb area of Michi-
SAM RAIMI on page 100
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