Mr-Fusion Titled with black irony, "A Simple Plan" plays out fairly directly. A few guys happen upon a downed plane and its millions and decide not to turn it in. And for a lot of its running time, I was left shaking my head at their decisions. It was never going to work. But the slow burn ignited with a series of incredibly effective twists and turns. The screws kept turning, mistrust lurking behind every corner and it really became a wicked guessing game.The real surprise is that the shock ending comes not with a gunshot, but with a few words. A profoundly bleak finish.7/10

SnoopyStyle Hank (Bill Paxton) is a hard worker with loving pregnant wife Sarah (Bridget Fonda) in a small Minnesota town. Hank goes on a drive with his brother Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton) and Jacob's friend Lou (Brent Briscoe). After crashing their car, they go off into the woods and find a crashed small plane. In it, they find a bag full of money. Hank wants to go to the police but he is convinced by the other two to keep the money. Hank comes up with a simple plan. He hides the money until the plane is discovered. If nobody comes looking for it, they will split up the $4.4 million among the three of them.Like the title suggests, this is a relatively simple movie. Of course, Hank's plan is never going to work especially with those two idiot loudmouth friends. Anyways, Hank breaks his promise not to tell his wife almost immediately. The tension builds and builds as these bumbling idiots get into a worst and worst situation. The snowy landscape gives the movie its desolate doomed atmosphere. Billy Bob does a great idiot but Bill Paxton's needy morality is the kicker. He starts out as a reasonable everyday man with morals. Director Sam Raimi fills every scene with a threatening tension.

Adam Peters (59%) A largely paint by numbers morality tale in a similar shape to the much better Fargo, featuring a good central performance from Bill Paxton and more than decent support backing him up. The premise is one of such dramatic substance and fuel for "What would you do?" type debate that even a lousy writer such as Skip Woods, or Eli Roth could squeeze at least some intrigue out. Where this does come off the rails a bit revolve around the character's decisions being clearly wrong-footed from the start. And even though the characters featured are supposed to be dimwitted, it still makes for a film that doesn't really push the premise to any real limit because the characters couldn't make more of a hash of things even if they tried. This is still an interesting, well made film, and it's worth a look, but it just doesn't quite make it as a true future classic.

patrick powell Sam Raimi's A Simple Plan works – just. There's no denying it's a gripping thriller, but it lacked one element which could have made it not just a good film – which it is – but a great film: the characters from the off are too sketchily drawn. We don't get to know them before it all kicks off and so their development – and the story's development – is taken more on trust than it should be. That's it really. Should you see it? Certainly, and you will not be disappointed. It's just that I feel it doesn't quite hang together as well as it might have done had the film been just a little longer with opening scenes establishing the four main characters more.