January 21–28, 1999

movie shorts

A Simple Plan

The rap on the Coen brothers used to be that they were effete stylists, film-school brats who knew how to make the camera do tricks but were incapable of creating human characters. Then they pared their style down for Fargo, and their detractors, no longer distracted, saw the human insight and wit that had always been a part of the Coens' art. Sam Raimi, who mentored the Coens on The Evil Dead and Crimewave, tries a similar trick with A Simple Plan, but this time the detractors turn out to be right. Suppressing his bigfoot sense of humor, his goofy camera moves and intentionally bad performances, Raimi has little left to make the movie tick. Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton play brothers who find a plane full of money downed in the Michigan wilderness and attempt to keep their find secret until they can make off with the dough. As things do in such situations, everything goes wrong, but since we don't care about the characters, there's no reason to worry if they get caught. Occasional shots of gargantuan black crows hanging ominously over the frosted landscape are about Raimi's only chance to indulge his true talents here. The rest is just watching snow fall.

-Sam Adams

See Sam Adams' interview with Sam Raimi