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All of these dreams seem within reach when the three men stumble across an airplane that has crashed in a nature preserve. On board they find the body of the pilot and a cache of $4 million in bills. "You want to keep it?" Hank asks incredulously. The others do. Soon he does, too. It should be a simple plan to hide the money, wait until spring and divide it among themselves. It's probably drug money, anyway, they tell themselves. Who will know? Who can complain? Hank is the smartest of the three, a college graduate. Jacob, buck-toothed and nearsighted, has never been very bright. Lou is a loose cannon. Can Hank keep them all under control? Some of the most harrowing moments in "A Simple Plan" show Hank watching in agonized frustration as the others make big, dumb blunders. Right after they find the money, for example, a law officer happens by, and what does Jacob do but blurt out to Hank, "Did you tell him about the plane? It sure sounded like a plane." At home, Hank's wife Sarah at first agrees it would be wrong to keep the money, but she turns that moral judgment around in a snap and is soon making smart suggestions: "You have to return some of the money, so it looks like no one has been there." All three men begin to dream of what they could do with the money. Then circumstances inspire one impulsive, reckless act after another--acts I will not reveal, because the strength of this film is in the way it leads its characters into doing things they could never have contemplated.

"A Simple Plan" is one of the year's best films for a lot of reasons, including its ability to involve the audience almost breathlessly in a story of mounting tragedy. Like the reprehensible "Very Bad Things," it is about friends stumbling into crime and then stumbling into bigger crimes in an attempt to conceal their guilt. One difference between the two films is that "A Simple Plan" faces its moral implications, instead of mocking them. We are not allowed to stand outside the story and feel superior to it; we are drawn along, step by step, as the characters make compromises that lead to unimaginable consequences.

The performances can be described only as flawless: I could not see a single error of tone or feeling. Paxton, Thornton, Fonda and Briscoe don't reach, don't strain and don't signal. They simply embody their characters, in performances based on a clear emotional logic that carries us along from the beginning to the end. Like Richard Brooks' "In Cold Blood" (1968), this is a film about ordinary people capable of monstrous deeds.

Thornton and Fonda have big scenes that, in other hands, might have led to grandstanding. They perform them so directly and simply that we are moved almost to tears--we identify with their feelings even while shuddering at their deeds.

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