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78It's not perfect -- Thornton's slack-jawed yokel Jacob is played a bit wide of the mark and Fonda continues to irk in some indefinable way -- but it's a revelation for longtime Raimi fans. And it's a hell of a ride too, for both Raimi fans and newcomers alike.
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60The script dawdles, and in spite of a good cast--Bill Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton (who's especially resourceful), Bridget Fonda, and Brent Briscoe--the movie tends to amble around its points rather than drive straight toward the heart of the matter.
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100One of the year's best films for a lot of reasons, including its ability to involve the audience almost breathlessly in a story of mounting tragedy.
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88Generates genuine tension because it's propelled by actual human feeling, which, these days, turns out to be a surprisingly thrilling prospect. [11 Dec 1998]
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75Sensitive performances and intelligent storytelling keep the sometimes-violent tale involving from start to finish, marking a giant step for director Raimi, previously known for action stories and over-the-top fantasies.
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100Lean, elegant, and emotionally complex -- a marvel of backwoods classicism.
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80Thornton's Jacob initially comes across as the love child of Elmer Fudd and Butthead, but ends up as the best role he's ever had.
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90An unleashed Raimi may be a more exciting moviemaker, but there's something to be said for the virtues of a good story well told, which describes A Simple Plan down to its last shivery snowflake.
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80What makes A Simple Plan an exciting, thoughtful thriller isn't the plot twists, but the twists and turns of Hank's tortured conscience as one lie leads to bigger and deadlier deceits.
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100In one of the sweetest ironies of the entire film year, Sam Raimi has made an A-movie with the soul of a B-movie classic.
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The role of Jacob is greatly expanded from the book, and the unsatisfying way that Smith and Raimi resolve the brothers' relationship in the movie is the only major change--major compromise--made in transporting the novel to the screen.
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90Money Can't Buy You Happiness. It hasn't been this vividly re-examined in decades, and we're the richer for it.
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88It's a Master "Plan."
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60There's something decidedly mechanical about this intermittently gripping movie's bleak view of human nature.
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88The characters are at the heart of A Simple Plan, and the gruesome complexity of their interaction elevates this film to the level of a midwinter treat.
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90Holds us in a state of horrified empathy.
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75[Raimi]'s drawn lovely, complex performances from Paxton and Thornton and proven that he can work effectively -- and movingly -- in a minor emotional key.
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75Works a familiar mine and produces more than a few nuggets. It's a good tonic, if one's still needed, for '80s-style cynicism: Greed is not good.
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Both simplifies and brings into focus the already simple and effective thriller.
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50But the stuff looks like what it is -- trite imagery grafted over the narrative barrens, like a bad weave on a balding pate.
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90When you get the shivers watching this wintry tale unfold, it won't be from the cold.
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30There's neither intricacy nor surprise in the narrative, and these dopes are tedious, witless company. Mostly you find yourself thinking, "How long until dinner?"
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70Their downward spiral is like a slow-motion highway pileup: You might think you don't want to watch, but you can't tear your eyes away.
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88The plan in A Simple Plan grows exponentially complex once the first dollar is purloined, an act that makes this unpretentious parable one of the season's better 'what's-going-to-happen-next?' movies.
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80The key differences are in emphasis and tone: “Fargo” is deadpan noir; A Simple Plan, with Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton as Mutt and Jeff siblings, is a more robust Midwestern Gothic that owes as much to Poe as Chandler.
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90As straightforward in narrative as it is gut-wrenching in effect, A Simple Plan is a sort of slow-motion skid down an icy blacktop— it's a movie you watch with a mounting sense of dread...[It's] an extremely credible thriller and an affecting brother-story.
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100But [Raimi]'s instructed his fabulous Style to take a hike, and, working from Scott Smith's brilliantly reconfigured script from Smith's own (much darker) novel, delivers a piece that is severe and disciplined in its evocation of the cold terrors of fate.
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100With elegant, clockwork construction, Smith has transplanted his novel of greed, betrayal and getting what you deserve to the screen, where it is told by director Sam Raimi with a spareness befitting the whiteness of its snowed-in setting.
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