Sam Raimi's Most Underrated And Most Tragic Movie Finally Has A 4K Blu-Ray

What is the absolute worst thing you would do to get ahead in life? Would you lie? Steal? Take a life? For almost as long as movies have been used to tell stories, filmmakers have been asking these questions, as they try to get at the heart of what drives people to do selfish, heinous things.

Lots of crime thrillers revel in the sensationalism of serial murderers or gangsters, people who commit the kinds of crimes we tell ourselves come from pure evil. There will always be an Anton Chigurh or a John Doe lurking in the collective fictional consciousness, ready to commit bloodshed for its own sake. But adjacent to the crime-thriller is the neo-noir, a revitalization of the classic noir films of the 1930s, ‘40s, and ‘50s, a genre defined by a rejection of moral absolutism and an interrogation of the values we claim to hold so dear. And one of the best in the genre comes from a filmmaker whose name is synonymous with mischievous demons and web-swinging superheroes, one who’s responsible for an underrated ‘90s classic with a brand new Arrow Video 4K UHD Blu-ray that will once again force viewers to reckon with the capacity for evil that lurks inside us all.

How Was A Simple Plan Initially Received?

Before author Scott B. Smith’s manuscript for A Simple Plan was even published, it became the center of a lesser-known Hollywood wildstorm. When the book was finally released in 1993, the film rights were sold to Mike Nichols for $250,000 upfront, with the book later optioned for development at Savoy Pictures.

But plans went sideways, almost as if manifested by the story itself, and the film changed hands multiple times. Over the course of the next five years, Ben Stiller, John Dahl (with Nicolas Cage attached to star), and John Boorman all took their crack at the material before it landed in Sam Raimi’s lap, who was so eager to direct something that allowed him to play outside of his wheelhouse that he ran with Boorman’s locations and his two leads, Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton.

After a torturously long development process, the film was finally released in December 1998. It wasn’t a resounding success at the box office, but it made an impact on critics, earning Smith an Oscar nomination for adapting his own screenplay and a Supporting Actor nomination for Thornton. Glen Lovell at Variety called it a “robust Midwestern Gothic that owes as much to Poe as to Chandler,” and Roger Ebert declared it the fourth best film of 1998 on Siskel and Ebert at the Movies. He elaborated in his written review, saying, “the performances can be described only as flawless” and complimenting Smith’s screenplay and Raimi’s rich and meticulous direction.

Why Is A Simple Plan Important To See Now?

At first glance, A Simple Plan doesn’t feel like a Sam Raimi movie. It doesn’t have the telltale signifiers of The Evil Dead or his Spider-Man movies; by design, there isn’t much bombastic, high-energy camera movement or slapstick physical comedy. Instead, Raimi offers authentic, painfully honest characters and a script that forces them into harrowing places.

When we’re first introduced to Hank Mitchell (Bill Paxton), he’s sold to us as having accomplished the American Dream. A hard worker with a decent job, he has a loving, contented wife and a baby on the way. But that depiction of domestic normalcy is shattered when Hank, his awkward, guileless brother Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton), and Jacob’s crass, unruly friend Lou (Brent Briscoe) find an abandoned, snow-covered plane in the woods filled with $4.4 million in $100 bills. Their secret pact to keep the money and split it up in the spring sets the stage for a bleak, snowballing ordeal of paranoia and sobering bloodshed, one that feels akin to an early Coen Brothers film (who gave Raimi advice on how to shoot in the snow) but with splashes of Raimi’s characteristic impulses coming out to play in dark, unexpected ways.

Almost 40 years on, it’s remarkable how effective the movie is as an almost Grecian fable of how money and the fantasy of upward mobility can expose the monstrousness lurking inside all of us. Despite agreeing not to tell his wife, Sarah (Bridget Fonda), about the money, Hank immediately walks back his promise, and after their moral protestations are done, the two of them begin plotting increasingly underhanded ways to preserve their stake.

Their relative financial comfort is a sharp contrast to the small-town squalor experienced by Jacob and Lou — ignoring the cash’s mysterious and probably dirty origins, everyone feels like their social circumstances entitle them to a piece of the pie, be it to provide a nice life for a soon-to-be-born daughter, finally find a home and some sort of companionship, or just pay off some debts and buy a lifetime supply of beer.

The money constantly threatens to peel at socioeconomic scabs and pour salt on old grievances. The already-lurking resentment that someone like Lou feels towards a hoity-toity college “intellectual” like Hank, and the contempt Hank holds for an alcoholic hick like Lou (and the obvious pity he feels for his brother), becomes gasoline just waiting for a match.

The corruptive drama wouldn’t be half as engaging without a remarkable ensemble: Bill Paxton gives one of the best performances of an iconic career as a community beacon whose suppressed entitlement erodes at his moral center, Bridget Fonda is fantastic as his dutiful, motherly, quietly cunning Lady Macbeth, and and the way Billy Bob Thornton hides Jacob’s quiet pain at his own isolation behind a perpetual smile and boyish laugh is nothing short of heartbreaking.

Beneath the suffocatingly atmospheric drama, you can still feel Raimi’s instincts leaning towards the absurdist streak that runs throughout his filmography; the way the situation spirals out of control would be comical if it weren’t so tragic, avoidable, and all too familiar. There’s an understandable desire to view our protagonists with disgust, but the very nature of our society rewards people who engage in “dog-eat-dog” methods as long as they can justify them.

It’s a skill that Hank and Sarah quickly learn, rationalizing every instance of selfishness and cruelty as being for the sake of their family, even as Jacob’s perceived naivety and dullness disappear in the face of their crimes to reveal a profound capacity for empathy and an understanding of right and wrong that those around him seem to lack. So much of the popular conception of crime is of depraved acts committed by people with moral compasses compromised beyond understanding, but A Simple Plan shines a spotlight on someone who would otherwise be upheld as an exemplary American citizen, only to show us how easy it is for the glimmering ideal of the American Dream to warp our convictions beyond recognition.

What Special Features Does The Simple Plan 4K Blu-Ray Have?

The Arrow Video release of A Simple Plan is a full-scale remaster of the original negatives overseen by Sam Raimi himself. The movie also comes with two separate audio commentaries (one by critics Glenn Kenny and Farran Smith Neheme, the other by production designer Patrizia von Brandenstein and filmmaker Justin Beahm), new interviews with cinematographer Alvar Kivilo, actors Becky Ann Baker and Chelcie Ross, as well as on-set interviews with Bill Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton, Bridget Fonda, Sam Raimi, and producer Jim Jacks. The overall care put into the package is proof that even if A Simple Plan is one of Raimi’s lesser-known outings, it’s still an effective American Gothic neo-noir that continues to resonate thanks to its brutally truthful approach to human greed and self-preservation.