He's dealing with two complete, first-class, grade A morons. Of course, in this movie, this absolutely stunningly stupid sh!t - like saying, "Oh, we heard a plane," and hitting a guy on a snowmobile for no reason, is gonna happen - and because it's a movie, it's just gonna keep on happening. It's too stupid to even watch.
I want the doctor to take your picture so I can look at you from inside as well.
Oh this is a great movie you're missing out on! Eighteen years later and I'm still blown away by the performances of Billy Bob Thornton, Bill Paxton, and all the other actors in this movie.
shareYeah, I just switched off from the snowmobile scene.
It's too much of a stretch that Paxton's character would so quickly become a murderer. His brother is obviously dangerous and should have gone to an institution instead of the old guy being killed in cold blood. I have no one to root for now, thus am uninvested in the movie.
Damn.
junkieintheattic.wordpress.com
Real movie fan there huh?
shareTry reading the book. You'll understand.
shareWell, I think it's made perfectly obvious throughout the movie that the character of Jacob has below-average intelligence.
As for Hank, he's a bit brighter (but not exactly a high achiever) and desperately protective of his brother.
It's all very well to sit in your armchair watching the movie, with the benefit of a pause/rewind button and ultimate hindsight. In real life, even the most educated people do amazingly stupid things, particularly when under pressure.
I like this movie, but the OP is kind of right. This movie becomes less and less believable as it reaches the end. I also thought Paxton's performance was sub-par. He is usually great, but I felt like he kind of phoned it in here.
shareFor some, this film will appear uninteresting. Nothing wrong with that. For me, this film gets better as I get older. The more life experiences I get, the better this film gets, especially things like the snowmobile scene. With the pressure on and a tight situation at hand, people will do some surprising things. And immediately after think, "Did I really do that?"
For those of you not liking this film for the reasons of this thread, come back in a few years. I first saw A Simple Plan not too long after its DVD release. It was okay. A month ago a coworker and I fell into a conversation and this film came to mind. We were not discussing films, but other things. Not mentioning the film, I thought a lot of it after the conversation. A couple days later, I looked for the DVD. Could not find it. Well that only whetted my appetite. FYE saved me at $3.95. Even then, I took a week to get around to watching it.
With no distractions, A Simple Plan was much more for me the second time around.
At times it was outright scary, as people can be at their worst. And dire circumstances can bring out the worst in us. I have seen it in others. More so, I have seen it in me. Unlike Hank, I was offered a reprieve and got my life back. It may not be the best life, but I feel like the luckiest guy alive.
cheers to you mate,
JKHolman
I came very close to doing the same. I mean, how many stupid things can you put up with in the first 15 minutes of the movie?
On the other hand, the snowmobile scene is definitely the low point. It gets a lot better after that. There are still a good number of silly things in the script, but the fantastic acting makes up for it.
I like the movie a lot. But I agree that it is kind of too "convenient" what idiots the brother and his friend were (especially the brother). Without their idiotism the plan would have worked fine until the serial number stuff became known.
shareThe most ridiculous part is that Carl never did ask to see the faux FBI agent's badge. However I don't think Sarah would have gotten any info over the phone about whether or not Baxter was an FBI agent.
share