“You don’t steal the American dream, you work for it.”

There are loads of movies where progressively worse crimes are committed to cover up the initial one, which tends to seem so innocent at the time. The wicked fun Quicksand comes to mind. I don’t think there are any as quite heartbreaking as Sam Raimi’s A Simple Plan. The film takes the audience slowly through the consequences of that first act of crime, showing how it unravels the lives of the players involved. Inevitably, it causes them to turn on each other, but in places far more painful than their pocketbook. Before Minnesota family man Hank Mitchell (Bill Paxton) fully realizes it, he’s trapped in a spiral of blind greed, murder, and ultimately, deep remorse.

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