Cold Comfort

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

Stopping by woods on a snowy day, three men discover a small, crashed plane that contains a dead pilot and a large sum of cash. They devise A Simple Plan to make off with the loot, and we are obliged to watch that plan unravel for what seems to be an eternity.

Despite the rural atmosphere, the bracing cold and the presence of people who seem at first glance to be honest rustics, we are not exactly in Robert Frost country here. Hank (Bill Paxton) is smart enough to guess that money in this amount is going to be pursued by its rightful (or, more likely, wrongful) owners, but he's a weak, inexplicably damaged fellow. His brother Jacob (cunningly played by Billy Bob Thornton) is a halfwit, and Jacob's pal Lou (Brent Briscoe) has a heedless temper. Back home, Hank's wife Sarah (Bridget Fonda) quickly turns into this caper's Lady Macbeth.

The movie, adapted from his own novel by Scott B. Smith and directed by Sam Raimi, whose specialty is cultish horror films, has an addled, feckless sobriety about it. These people think they're saying something serious about greed and how it can cloud people's judgment. They want you to think Fargo or The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. But there's neither intricacy nor surprise in the narrative, and these dopes are tedious, witless company. Mostly you find yourself thinking, "How long until dinner?"

--R.S.