A Simple Plan (1998)
a boomer, incel & coomer find $4mil in the woods
“When I was still just a kid, I remember my father telling me what he thought that it took for a man to be happy. Simple things, really. A wife he loves, a decent job, friends and neighbours who like and respect him. And for a while there, without hardly even realizing it, I had all that. I was a happy man.”
If ‘wrong time, wrong place’ was a more well-known cliché instead of the opposite, it would likely be ascribed to Sam Raimi’s ’98 film, A Simple Plan. Especially so when it came to its theatrical release and box office intake. Despite high praise for its storytelling, direction and acting, A Simple Plan never quite took off and lies stagnant akin to the plane that begins the movie’s plot, like a sleeper hit that never awoke from its slumber. Hidden under a quilt of relentless snowfall, A Simple Plan waits for the odd person to discover it now and then, only for the most recent viewer to wonder how they never saw or heard of it before.
Three reasons spring to mind. One, A Simple Plan released a couple years after Fargo. With them both being based in Minnesota and much to do about crime, to say nothing of the hype surrounding the latter, which went on to become a TV series of 5 seasons and counting, the former likely appeared to be a movie piggybacking off the success of the other, despite The Coen Brothers assisting Sam Raimi when it came to filming in the snow. Two, the director himself was hardly known for understated crime dramas with morally grey implications, having achieved notoriety through the horror genre beforehand and little else, thus asking too much of an audience who expected more of the same, or Three, for whatever reason or perhaps lack thereof, it was simply a wrong time, wrong place scenario.
And that is really how it turns out to be for our three main characters, the upstanding and soon to be family man, Hank, his awkward, socially inept and basically incel brother, Jacob and likewise his best friend, the haywire and drunkard, Lou. When by chance they stumble upon 4.4 million dollars in the woods, it’s decided they’ll stash it away until its safe for them to spend, hoping the aeroplane in which it’s found won’t bring about any trouble. Little do they realise however, that trouble found them along with the money upon the second they saw it. For these men, be they educated or refined, irresponsible or erratic, have one thing in common. They’re not criminals. And yet the prospect of committing what they convince themselves will be a victimless crime, soon has them transgressing in ways they would’ve never imagined themselves possible.
From here, the plot moves as quickly as the panic of being caught, where thoughtless slips of the tongue and impulsive actions throw our characters into further and further disarray, all without spending a dime of the riches they discovered. A Simple Plan it is anything but. And with their conflicting personalities and differing lifestyles, it isn’t hard to see how quickly their lives and everything they once knew will soon unravel, never to be the same again.
One instance early on, for example, exemplifies not just the shadier implication of having fuck you money but also its effect on the characters and what they really think of one another when push comes to shove. Hank, who’s seen as somewhat pompous and condescending by Lou simply because he uses the occasional big word and is educated beyond both him and his brother, which he is, soon demonstrates exactly why they feel he looks down upon them. After deciding to keep the cash, Hank takes on the responsibility because he’s the only one who has a job and tells Lou not to breathe a word about the loot to his wife. Only in the next scene, Hank literally spills the beans to his heavily pregnant wife, who soon starts scheming herself. This hypocrisy, likely only a cause of inconsequential jealousy and oneupmanship previously, now has the pitfalls of greed to feast upon, where suspicions regarding each other soon cement themselves into empirical truths. The sheer notion of committing the crime of theft has them conspiring, deceiving and acting in duplicity. With Hank’s brother Jacob more similar to Lou and more than aware of it himself, the plot is rife for conflict of biblical proportions and shy away from that, A Simple Plan does not. Thinking that it’s okay for him to tell his wife likely backfires for Hank in the exact way he suspected it would if Lou told his, opening a doorway to a side of his wife he’s never known before, inadvertently summoning her inner Lady Macbeth.
As a character study, this is where A Simple Plan thrives. I could put a few questions marks around the cause and effect issues of the film, especially regarding the incompetence of the police and how the last person they’d ever suspect is Hank, despite the multiple crime scenes he pops up in like a comically conspicuous Where’s Wally, not to mention how his wife has better detective skills than the entire police squad combined. I’d dare to suggest, however, that the film is more a drama about relationships and the devastating effect greed can wreak upon them, not a crime drama in the genre-based, stereotypical sense.
I’ll resist detailing the remaining onslaught of plot points, machinations and deceptions, all of which play out in an ever escalating and impending avalanche for our characters, since the suspense will be far more visceral when witnessed with little notion of what to expect, and instead end this write-up with a couple of side notes.
Upon my most recent viewing, I’d forgotten how frequently animals are used to not only foretell events to come but even add their own input to the plot. It’s not the men who discover the cash for instance, but more because a hungry fox stole a chicken from its coop, only to be chased by one of the men’s dogs, which made them in turn give chase, where a murder of crows lurk above in the branches, indicating not just the death of someone nearby but also the death of three men’s lives as they have hitherto known them. It’s by chance they find the money, and by taking chance after chance to keep it, they continue to gamble with their very own fate.
In the opening voiceover of the film, the notion of simplicity when it comes to happiness makes no mention of money whatsoever and yet the notion of having more wealth always incites the inkling of being happier. It’s something us poor folk, having been stung by poverty too many a time, have each been guilty of. Of course, the opening line foreshadows impending catastrophe as well, provoking intrigue in the viewer, but the notion of happiness being a simple endeavour is just as absorbing. It subtly hints at the bigger scheme of the narrative and moral conundrums ahead.
As Hank ironically says upon discovery of the cash. “You earn the American Dream. You don’t steal it.”
Later on, after a lot of bedlam, the film wisely slows down a touch to reflect back on what’s occurred and revisit this concept again, though this time Hank’s brother Jacob takes the reigns. After confessing that he’s never kissed a girl (sitting in a car, of course), he tells Hank about the girl whom he thought Jacob dated for a while, only for Jacob to confess that she only did it for a bet. And a bet of a measly $100. Her main motivator was money, and yet, Jacob looks back on it with a fondness it likely doesn’t deserve, simply because well, it’s the only form of intimacy he’s ever really known. And that’s the only reason he wants the money himself. For a small piece of intimacy, no matter how long it lasts and even if it’s only given to him because of the fucking money. What his brother Hank had already before they found the millions. It’s the simplest, most beautiful, poignantly sad and telling scene of the film, revealing how, all we really want is to feel like we belong. Simple really.
