Scott B. Smith's novel A Simple Plan was a humourless, snowbound gloss on "Macbeth" so moralistic in its storytelling as to become the beach-read equivalent of a "Davey and Goliath" cartoon. How surprising it is, then, that in Smith's own screenplay adaptation of his book, the dedicated moroseness of the page becomes elegiac and contemplative. Sam Raimi, creator of such frenetic cult films as The Evil Dead and Darkman, strapped himself into a strait-jacket to direct A Simple Plan, a deliberate thriller that has less in common with his genre faves than with friend Joel Coen's greed dirge Fargo, especially in its frosty milieu.

It's a quiet winter in a teensy Midwestern town. During a hunting trip, the Brothers Mitchell Hank (Bill Paxton) and Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton) and their friend Lou (Brent Briscoe) happen upon a downed airplane. The birds have already been at the pilot, next to whom sits an unclaimed bag of money. The three men decide to take the loot--$4.4 million--and keep their discovery of the crash site a secret; they will split the money only after the spring thaw, once the plane is recovered by authorities and any inquiries into the money's disappearance have blown over. The trouble is, Jacob and Lou are close to destitute and eager to break the pact, and Hank's own very pregnant, avaricious wife (Bridget Fonda) is hatching schemes to make her husband the fortune's sole heir.

A Simple Plan offers an experience far removed from its source material. (The film's climax, for instance, is affecting where the book's is disengaging.) An obvious and exhausted MacGuffin (the old briefcase-of-money) is enlivened by the characters caught up in its pursuit, three genuinely hard-luck sadsacks. Danny Boyle's Shallow Grave featured a similar premise (although it took place within the cosy confines of a London flat), but his leads were morally bankrupt from the get-go--it was to watch a pool of sharks and thus the stakes were too interchangeable. We want A Simple Plan's trio of thieves (Jacob, in particular, who thinks money will make him feel "normal") to save themselves from a life of disconsolation rather than to succeed or fail based on our escapist or righteous desires.

I give: the best reason to see A Simple Plan is for the performance of Billy Bob "Sling Blade" Thornton as the anaemic, tormented Jacob. For the first third of the film, Thornton is used as a punchline, his buck teeth and sunken cheeks facilitating dumb-hick reaction shots, no matter how purely Kuleshovian his facial expression. But Thornton's complexity blossoms in league with the narrative's--the actor gradually peels back the layers of our assumptions, and we come to feel that the informally educated Jacob is the smarter Mitchell. Note the sequence in which Jacob imitates Hank, mercilessly insulting him in the process; his ingenious motivation for doing so later becomes clear, but Thornton never once tips his hand, leading to a sequence that is equally indicated by catharsis. This is the most moving, memorable supporting performance I've witnessed in years.

Actually, Raimi yields terrific work from all his principals, and his directorial presence is felt, if not explicitly seen (with the exception of one gleefully gratuitous and totally shocking signature camera move). I mentioned earlier that the film recalls Fargo, and it does--to a point: Fargo remains at an ironic distance while A Simple Plan gets its hands in the dirt. Or snow, as it were.-Bill Chambers