Sam Raimi (The Quick and the Dead) directs this powerful tale of two brothers who, together with a friend, find "the American Dream" - $4.4 million inside a plane that crashed in a wildlife preserve near their home. Like an incident played out earlier this year in Very Bad Things, a group of ordinary men put into an extraordinary situation ask themselves, "What if we don’t call the police?"

Hank’s (Bill Paxton) first reaction is to go to the authorities. Who could blame him? Of the three, he has the most to lose. A respected member of the community and college graduate, Hank is the only one with a job – a dead-end position at the local feed and grain mill – and his lovely young librarian wife, Sarah (Bridget Fonda), is expecting their first child in a few days. But older sibling Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton) and his friend Lou, two unemployed dimwits that vie for the coveted title of "town drunk," finally talk the reluctant Hank into keeping the loot.

Jacob and Lou’s plan is a simple one – hold on to the money, wait until the spring and see if anyone comes looking for it once the plane is discovered. Hank agrees, but under the conditions that they keep it a secret and he retain the money in the interim. Hank also threatens to burn it all if he gets the slightest inkling that the authorities are on to him.

Of course, Hank tells Sarah as soon as he gets home, and the next morning she suggests a way to enhance the plan. She thinks that Hank should take $500,000 back to the plane so that whoever finds it in the spring won’t believe anybody else had been there. And he can’t tell Jacob because he would probably re-steal the $500,000 on his own. Sarah tells her husband in an almost morose tone, "We’ll have to be careful. That’s how we’ll have to be from now on."

Needless to say, this greed causes things to spin out of control very quickly and very horribly. Again, like in Very Bad Things, the picture shows that the true nature of man is to do anything to cover his/her own ass in an all-out attempt to grab whatever you can get your hands on. At one point, Sarah tries to comfort Hank by telling him, "Nobody would ever believe you’re capable of doing what you’ve done." Now that’s a supportive wife, huh?

Strangely, the true conscience of A Simple Plan is Jacob. The weight of the big score and the resulting lying, cheating and murder has all but crushed any remaining spirit that faintly flickered within him. Completely drained, Jacob asks his younger brother in a particularly moving scene, "Do you ever feel evil?" He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to.

A Simple Plan is a virtually flawless film. The acting is first-class – Paxton (Mighty Joe Young) has never been better and the nearly unrecognizable Thornton (Armageddon) is all but guaranteed an Oscar nomination (as is Smith’s screenplay). Danny Elfman’s creepy score is perfect and Raimi’s direction is also one of the year’s best, bringing to mind the previous snowy success of Fargo. In fact, the Coen brothers worked on Raimi’s first feature (1983’s Evil Dead) and aided him with tips on how to shoot this film’s bleak snow scenes properly. Raimi also effectively blends settings together with clips of a fox ravaging a hen house.

Unnerving, almost to the point of viewer discomfort, A Simple Plan is a brilliant example of what a modern thriller should be – dark, drab and, most importantly, not Virus.

2:01 – for language, extreme violence and brief nudity