4K ULTRA HD REVIEW / HDR SCREENSHOTS
In one of his few starring roles, the late Bill Paxton is rock-solid as Hank Mitchell, who has a steady, if unfulfilling, job at the local feed lot. Billy Bob Thornton received a much-deserved supporting actor Oscar nomination as his slow-witted, unemployed brother, Jacob.
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“A SIMPLE PLAN”
4K Ultra HD & Blu-ray, 1998, R for adult themes, violence, language
Best extra: Critic Bilge Ebiri’s new essay, “This Is What It Costs”
AT THE OUTSET of his essay “This Is What It Costs,” critic Bilge Ebiri writes that, “It might be difficult today to grasp what a departure ‘A Simple Plan’ was for director Sam Raimi.
He could not be more on the money.
Until 1998, Raimi was known for the gory, kinetic, wickedly funny thrill rides “The Evil Dead,” “Evil Dead II,” and “Army of Darkness” and the superhero-ish “Darkman.” “Genres bent their knees to him,” Ebiri writes, “not the other way around.”
That changed when he took on Scott Smith’s Oscar-nominated adaptation of his 1993 best-seller (put it on your list). The Sam Raimi celebrated by horror-movie fans and comic-book geeks was missing in action. Echoing Humphrey Bogart’s 1948 classic “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,”“A Simple Plan,” the high-water mark of Raimi’s career, is sober, straightforward and Shakespearean in its telling of tormented characters who pay for their greed.
At one time, directors Mike Nichols (“The Graduate”) and John Boorman (“Deliverance”) had been attached to the film. When Raimi got the job, he had something to prove, Ebiri writes — “that he could tamp down some of his directorial quirks, the he could effectively and efficiently shoot a straight-faced thriller without any of his self-aware frills that had come to mark his work.
Did he ever prove it.
(1&2) Hank and Jacob visit the graves of their parents, then (3-6), with Jacob’s friend Lou, come across a wrecked plane in a remote nature preserve with a dead pilot and $4 million in a duffel bag inside. They decide to keep the money and split it up in the spring.
In one of his few starring roles, the late Bill Paxton (“One False Move”) plays Hank Mitchell, an Everyman of sorts who with his slow-witted brother Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton, “Sling Blade”) and Jacob’s friend Lou (Brent Briscoe, “The Green Mile”) come across a wrecked plane in a snowy Minnesota nature preserve with a dead pilot and $4 million in a duffel bag inside. Hank has a steady job at a feed lot, but Jacob and Lou are unemployed with no prospects.
Figuring that they’ve stumbled across drug money and no one’s looking for it, Jacob and Lou want to keep it; Hank, incredulous at first, is soon on board and comes up with a plan: He’ll hide the money until the spring and if no one has claimed it, they’ll split it and leave town.
Bridget Fonda (“Single White Female”), as Hank’s pregnant wife Sarah is also excellent. She works at the library, and when Hank asks what she would do if she found $4 million, she immediately says, “Give it back.” Soon, though, she approaches Lady Macbeth in her machinations as the plan goes to hell and the weak-willed Hank is at a loss for what to do.
It’s hard to overstate just how good everybody is. Paxton and Fonda share some of the most wrenching scenes you’ll ever witness. Thornton, an Oscar nominee, plays Jacob as an innocent who only wants to meet a girl and restore the family farm. Briscoe’s Lou is a fun-loving drunk, a loose cannon who’s in debt and wants his cut. There’s no grandstanding; instead, the entire cast, especially Chelcie Ross (“Basic Instinct”) as Sheriff Carl Jenkins, Becky Ann Baker (“Men in Black”) as Lou’s wife Nancy, and Gary Cole (the excellent TV series “American Gothic”) as the mysterious, lethal Baxter, inhabit their roles.
Anything else and the choices made and the tragedies they lead to would not be believable.
Getting in deep. (1&2) When their plan takes the first of many tragic turns, Hank and Jacob are trying to get their stories straight when Sheriff Carl Jenkins (Chelce Ross) drives by. (3&4) Bridget Fonda is excellent as Hank’s wife Sarah. She works at a library and initially wants to return the money — before showing tendencies of Lady Macbeth as she conspires to keep it.
VIDEO/AUDIO
Arrow Video has done a bang-up job with this must-have release. Remastered in 4K Ultra HD from the 35mm original camera negative and graded in Dolby Vision, HDR10, and standard def, “A Simple Plan” (1.85:1 aspect ratio) looks flawless.
Shot in frigid Minnesota then Wisconsin when Raimi and cinematographer Alar Kivilo (“The Blind Side”) ran short of snow, the Raimi-approved 4K master is a study in contrasts, but whether the camera is trained on the remote, frozen countryside or the softer, earthy interiors, you feel the characters’ confinement. Bathed in a steady, unobtrusive grain, colors are true and detail is solid, and everything is encoded onto the larger 100 GB disc.
The DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround and 2.0 stereo audio tracks put you square in the middle of the story. Because it’s dialogue-driven, the difference in the two in that regard is negligible, though the gunfire, cawing birds, and crunching snow may play better in a roomful of speakers. Regardless, the haunting, bittersweet score by Danny Elfin (“Batman”) gets full range. It’s one of the best of his career.
Who do you Trust?
The hole gets deeper. (1) Lou is drunk and enraged by Hank’s new plan when he levels his rifle at him. (2&3) Hank is taken downtown to be questioned by Jenkins and the county detective (Robert Martin Halverson).
EXTRAS
Arrow had done a superb job here, too. Besides Ebiri’s must-read essay, other new bonuses include an excerpt from John Kenneth Muir’s 2004 book “The Unseen Force: The Films of Sam Raimi,” commentaries with critics Glenn Kinney and Farrah Smith Nehme and production designer Patrizia von Brandenstein, and brief, insightful interviews with Kivilo, Ross and Baker.
Kivilo says he had recently left the cold winters of Canada for sunny California when Raimi, after a 30-minute interview, hired him for the coldest shoot he’s ever experienced. He also recalls that the stark location photos almost looked black and white, and how they established the film’s aesthetic. For his part, Ross, who’d worked with Thornton and Briscoe, built a biography for Sheriff Jenkins that went beyond the script. Why? “Then I can believe that this is who he is.”
Archival extras include behind-the-scenes footage, on-set interviews with Raimi, Paxton, Thornton, Fonda, and producer Jim Jacks and the theatrical trailer.
— Craig Shapiro
F.B.I. Investigation
(1&2) The sinister FBI man Baxter (Gary Cole) arrives at the sheriff’s office and demands to be taken to the crash site.