Bill Paxton plays Hank Mitchell, a working-class man who works at a local feed store to support he and his pregnant wife, Sarah, played by Bridget Fonda. He has a brother, Jacob, who is played by Billy Bob Thornton; Jacob, along with his pal Lou Chambers (Brent Briscoe), are the town's resident drunks. One snowy day, after a visit to their father's grave, Hank and Jacob, with Lou along for the ride, have an accident that sends Jacob's dog running into the woods. While looking for the dog, they come across a downed charter plane, its pilot dead, with a gym bag of four million dollar in tow.

The three waste no time tearing into the bag of "lost treasure," despite Hank's reservations about keeping the money. But Jacob and Lou have other plans, those which do not include alerting the proper authorities as to their recent find. After a heated argument, they agree that they will wait to split the money until they feel certain that no one will come looking for it. Just for safekeeping, Hank takes charge of the money, which soon takes charge of his good-hearted nature.

As the plot thickens, things begin to work into a frenzy. Sarah, now overcome with the idea of a wealthy life, urges Hank to keep a close watch on Lou, as well as Jacob, who becomes increasingly unstable as things reach new heights of desperation. The murder of a local farmer at the hands of Hank throws a new piece of leverage into the game, leading him to develop a new plan of making himself look completely innocent. More complications begins to arise, and soon, no one is left untouched.

Director Sam Raimi, whose previous work includes the wildly outrageous "Evil Dead" series, takes a unique turn in his career, directing Smith's screenplay (adapted from his own novel) with attention to story, action and character traits in equal measure. He is careful not to overburden his audience with too much at one time, clearing up one matter before introducing another so that each new development carries its own importance to the story. He also manages to keep things moving at a brisk pace, so as not to sink the movie into periods of boredom.

The script itself is one of the most chilling and satisfying I've seen in some time. It focuses on the effects of greed on mankind, turning the most well-intentioned of all townspeople into desperate, money-hungry slaves, replacing trust and good judgment with suspicion and rationalization. These changes are seen in each of the characters, most notably Hank and Sarah, whom we care for as the film opens, and utterly despise once it ends. Jacob, however, remains as the sole character with a grip on reality, overcome by his fears and his remorse for his actions; in the face of his brother's struggle to keep their twisted operation alive, he merely wants it all to come to an end and return to his life.

Fleshing out these characters appears to have been no simple task, but Paxton, Fonda, Thornton and Briscoe live up to the challenge. "A Simple Plan" portrays some of their best work, as well as that of Raimi's, who supercharges his otherwise quiet film with a terrific amount of underlying suspense that arises not solely from the grizzly crimes of its characters, but also from their unsettling states of mind once things get out of hand.

The major difference that perhaps makes A SIMPLE PLAN more powerful as an examination of greed than SIERRA MADRE is this: Huston's main characters went looking for riches in a land known to be full of 'em, so they didn't have to necessarily worry about being caught stealing anything---Dobbs & Co. only had to worry about other people trying to steal their gold. Hank (Bill Paxton), Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton), and Lou (Brent Briscoe) accidentally find $4.4 million in unmarked American currency in a downed plane in a quiet, snowy Minnesota town, and the moment they decide to steal the money for themselves (and that is basically what they decide to do, although they certainly try to convince themselves that it's not stealing) is the moment that changes all of their lives forever.

In SIERRA MADRE, Walter Huston's character talked early in the film about how he's seen money destroy men's souls. That is exactly what happens to the characters in A SIMPLE PLAN. It leads Hank to coldblooded murder, it leads Hank's wife (Bridget Fonda) to become a modern version of Lady Macbeth, and it drives Jacob to despair. In one key moment, Jacob confesses to Hank that he "feels evil," and that just about sums up the movie's theme succinctly.

While Huston's film also worked as a grand adventure tale, Raimi's film is more in the bleak, film noir style of the Coen Brothers' FARGO, right down to its Minnesota setting and constantly falling snow. It sometimes feels like a suspense-thriller (especially towards the end), but there are no stylish, bombastic action scenes here in the manner of Raimi's earlier films---just a lot of quietly devastating moments and flashes of quick but shocking violence. It's the emotional violence done to these characters, though, that reverberates throughout the whole film.

The performances are all powerfully convincing across the board, and while some might take issue with the plausibility of some of the plot twists in the film's later moments (I can't believe that no one actually bothered to ask to see that person's badge just to make sure he was who he said he was), that is hardly enough to detract from the tragic cumulative impact of this film. Highly recommended.