A Simple Plan

reviewed by Vivian Rose, age 14, from US

The entire point of the too- long, too-treacherous film "A Simple Plan" can be summed up in one common axiom: "Money is the root of all that kills". In this movie, money and greed kill a lot of people.

Three hicks from the sticks are out hunting one day when they discover a crashed plane, buried in the snow (apparently they live way up north where winters are long). Inside the plane, they find a lovely bird-pecked corpse and a gym bag containing nearly four and a half million dollars. One of the hicks, a self-righteous, do-good accountant, wants to turn the cash over to the police. His buddies, who are basically two bumbling idiots, want to just keep the money for themselves, reasoning that, "It's probably drug money so keeping it isn't wrong". When he lets his friends talk him into keeping the money, things quickly go from bad to worse, and by the end of the film a lot of people are dead.

"A Simple Plan" was amusing for the first hour or so, and there was a lot of suspense, but after a while it got boring. Based on a book (which I vaguely remember reading several years ago), this story should have been scaled back more when it was turned into a film. Furthermore, the lack of ethics and bad judgment displayed by most of these characters didn't impress me. On the way out of the movie I heard a woman remark that the movie was too "dark", and I found it a little depressing myself. This certainly isn't what they call a "feel-good" movie. It's more like a "feel-bad" movie.

My rating: 2 stars

Rating : R (for violence and language)

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