I found the movie “A Simple Plan” to be very interesting, intense and shocking. The movie takes place in rural Minnesota where not much happens and everyday life follows the same patterns day after day. The main focus of the movie is on brothers Hank (Bill Paxton) and Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton) and Jacobs’s friend Lou (Brent Briscoe) who find a deserted plane with a bag full of 4.4 million dollars in it. Hank suggests they turn the money in but it is Jacob and Lou who convince him to keep it. They derive a plan to keep the money safe with Hank until they are sure no one is looking for it.
The plan starts to unravel quickly, however, when Jacob kills a man on a snowmobile who he thought was suspicious. From there things move from bad to worse when Hanks wife Sarah (Bridget Fonda) convinces him that the best thing to do is get Lou drunk and have him confess to killing Dwight Stephanson (Tom Carey), the man on the snowmobile. The plan goes wrong though and Lou and his wife, Nancy (Becky Ann Baker), end up dead. Hank and Jacob cover up the death of Lou and Nancy, thinking they are now in the clear, however, an FBI agent shows up looking for the money. They soon find out that the FBI agent is not an FBI agent like he says he is and is actually the bother of the man who flew the plane; he has come looking for the 4.4 million dollars. The plan finally fully unravels when the FBI agent shoots a policeman, Hank shoots the FBI agent, and then has the difficult task of killing Jacob who cannot handle all the lies and pressure anymore. At the end Hank burns the money because the FBI could track the serial numbers.
This was all supposed to be a simple plan. They were supposed to keep the money safe and secret until winter was over, then leave town and start new lives. Their greed, however, took control and people started ending up dead and more and more lies had to be cultivated to try and cover up all the mistakes made. When money comes into our life we tend to become greedy and this is a prime example. Money has a tendency to change people. We end up forgetting our morals and what truly matters in life. Money does not equal happiness and I think that this movie did a fine job of showing that. I enjoyed watching this movie because it made me think about what I value in life and that money should not be my number one priority.
