Billy Bob Thornton’s Classic Thriller Is Still His Greatest Movie 28 Years Later

Published Nov 13, 2026, 12:28 AM EST Anthony Crislip has always loved movies and television, and has been published in outlets such as SlashFilm and Ultimate Classic Rock. While working as a film programmer or judge at a film festival, he has striven to develop interest in underseen films. He is a particular fan of digging deep into forgotten corners of film history. With the hit Paramount+ series Landman, Billy Bob Thornton has experienced the esteemed late-career Taylor Sheridan-scripted boost familiar to actors like Sylvester Stallone and Kevin Costner. It’s the rare project that can both give a legendary actor some complex new dimensions while also zeroing in on the things that audiences love about them the most. But if Thornton’s oil landman Tommy Norris deals primarily in the actor’s charm and perceptive insights (as well as his ability to throw out one-liners), it’s not necessarily the most reflective of the roles that truly established him as a brilliant actor. Thornton had been in movies before his breakthrough performance in 1996's Sling Blade, an epic character study he wrote and directed, but that movie showed his range, intensity, and grace in a fully three-dimensional role. And it was soon to be followed by one of his best roles ever. In Sam Raimi’s 1998 film A Simple Plan, Thornton's role at first appears to be somewhat undeserving of his talents. As in Sling Blade, he plays a somewhat simple-minded character embroiled in a story of violence and crime, with Jacob (Thornton) largely playing second fiddle to the machinations of his morally conflicted brother Hank (Bill Paxton) after they discover a wrecked aircraft in the Midwestern wilderness. In a traditional noir twist, the plane has over $4 million in it, a sum of money that could change the lives of the brothers as well as Jacob’s brother Lou (Brent Briscoe). Lou and Jacob enable each other to a degree that evidently annoys the more straitlaced Hank, whose first thought was to turn the money in. Soon, the millions are effectively a noose around their necks. 'A Simple Plan' Was An Odd Choice for Billy Bob Thornton and Sam Raimi image via Paramount Pictures A Simple Plan now looks like a major career left turn from Sam Raimi, the director who came to prominence in the public eye with films like Darkman and the original Evil Dead trilogy. His mastery of special effects, horror filmmaking, and Three Stooges-esque comedy made him an unusual pick for a film about betrayal, greed, and brotherhood (although he makes room for all three in the scene of the plane discovery). And his career from the 2000s on has largely been involved in the business of superhero spectacle, whether it’s in the Tobey Maguire-starring Spider-Man trilogy or his dire Oz the Great and Powerful. A Simple Plan represents the filmmaker working in a more subdued and moral register, with characters that feel like real human beings, even to the point of not being entirely sympathetic. Viewers might expect a character like Jacob to be well-meaning and naive, a little brother who’s made some screwed-up decisions. But Billy Bob Thornton captures the glint in his eye when he’s considering the cash, saying that stealing the money makes him “like Robin Hood.” The movie explores the consequences of finding the money on all three men, with Hank offering to take the cash in until the snow melts and the plane is discovered by authorities. But how long can these guys hold onto a secret like this? They’re not exactly criminal masterminds, and Jacob can’t help but accidentally bring up the plane to passersby. In the tradition of great stories of guilt, like The Tell-Tale Heart or Crime and Punishment, the truth is begging to come out, and it does so in the form of violence. Where 'A Simple Plan' Differs from 'Fargo' Billy Bob Thornton could make Jacob messing around with a beer interesting. Working with a screenplay based on the novel by Scott B. Smith (whose later book The Ruins would be tamed down in adaptation), Sam Raimi created a sense of detail and liveliness among the characters that Thornton, Brent Briscoe, and Bill Paxton all honor in different ways. They’re not just simple criminals or thoughtless losers, but real guys that seemed to have crawled out of early ‘90s rural Minnesota, in a way that distinguishes the movie from its clearest cinematic relative: Joel and Ethan Coen’s 1996 classic Midwestern crime masterpiece Fargo. While the brothers would eventually cast Thornton in their divisive noir pastiche The Man Who Wasn’t There, their movies tend to have harsher, less redemptive outlooks than Sam Raimi’s take on the material. Where Fargo opts for dark comedy and farcical tragedy, A Simple Plan mines deep wells of sadness and sentimentality in its story. Thornton’s eyes suggest either a wild hellion or someone racked with pain, depending on the scene. He holds onto the guilt Hank feels after a man eventually dies, becoming something of a scapegoat for the whole criminal conspiracy. He recognizes that he lacks his brother’s respect, and old wounds rise back up soon. The performance lacks the charisma and likability that has come to define much of Thornton’s filmography, but it makes up for it in complexity and empathy, enough so that it garnered a much-deserved Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. As he takes a character who could be despicable or pathetic and finds incredible grace notes, it’s hard to deny that it’s some of his greatest work.