A Simple Plan Movie Review

I’ll come right out and say it. Fargo was a better movie. The camera angles, landscaping, and feel you get from the story all represent 1996’s Fargo. The two movies have many similarities. The heroine is naïve, yet capable and pregnant. The town they live in is small, covered with snow, and everybody knows your name. The initial murder in the film snowballs into more. Everyone wants the money for themselves (that happens to be a kidnapping ransom). I could go on but I don’t want to bore you.

Bill Paxton stars as Hank Mitchell, a normal every day kind of guy. Hank, his moronic brother Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton) and Jacob’s friend Lou (Brent Briscoe) find a crashed plane filled with 4.4 million dollars one day and decide to keep it. Well, kind of. Hank is the smartest of the three and he thinks it would be a good idea to keep the money until the plane is found, then disperse it among themselves. Here come the murders.

The movie has a good story, and decent acting. Billy Bob Thornton is superb as the idiot Jacob. What bothered me was Paxton. This is a normal guy who is surrounded by murder and he doesn’t seem phased by it that much. Unlike in Very Bad Things where the guys are beside themselves when they see the killings. Paxton just has a weird look on his face. Not convincing.

The movie is o.k. but I would recommend either renting Fargo or going to see Very Bad Things if you’re in the mood for this kind of movie. I guess I just expected more.