A Simple Plan (1998)

A Simple Plan (1998)

In director Sam Raimi's neo-noirish, dramatic and violent crime-thriller, first-time scriptwriter Scott B. Smith adapted his own compelling and grim 1993 thriller novel (a NY Times best-seller) for which he was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay (losing to Bill Condon's Gods and Monsters (1998)). The film's only other Oscar nomination was for Best Supporting Actor (Billy Bob Thornton) who lost to James Coburn in Affliction (1998).

The story told about the fortunes (and misfortunes) of a trio of rural, blue-collar Midwesterners who happened to find millions of dollars in cash, and then concocted "a simple plan" to abscond with the money - before everything began to inevitably unravel. As with all tales of this kind, greed, mistrust, unpredictable complications, paranoia, deceitfulness, and both stupid and deadly mistakes doomed the small-town residents to seek irreversible, desperate and failing measures.

The suspenseful, cautionary film with slowly-escalating tensions portrayed the dark side of corruptible human nature of the three richly-displayed characters, also exemplified by the bleak and grayish winter skies (shot mostly on location in Minnesota, with a low-key black and white color scheme). The discontentedness and moral compromises made by the basically-decent but corrupted principal characters were also described in the film's taglines:

• "Sometimes good people do evil things."
• "Four million dollars and plenty of change."
• "They've worked hard all their lives, but they still can't afford the American Dream. Stealing it is even better."

Its main tragic Shakespearean plot ("money (and/or greed) is the root of all evil") was considered to be a reworking of one of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales ("The Pardoner's Tale"), and also loosely based on the well-known fable: "The Three Thieves and a Purse of Gold." Other films echoing the film's message about how wealth corrupts included John Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), Danny Boyle's Shallow Grave (1994), and one of the last lines of dialogue in the Coen Brothers' similar film Fargo (1996): "And for what? For a little bit of money? There's more to life than a little money, you know."

On a total budget of 30ドル million, the film made only 16ドル.3 million in gross revenues, due to its limited release. Danny Elfman's haunting music compositions (with flutes, zithers, hand-drums, banjos, and pianos) and superb cinematography by Alar Kivilo made the absorbing film extremely memorable.

• before the opening title credits, there was a close-up view (filling the screen) of an ominous black crow on a tree branch surveying a wintry landscape; during the titles, a crafty red fox stalked a chicken coop for its next meal
• on New Years' Eve in a small rural town in Wright County, Minnesota, humble and sensible, calm, measured and well-educated feed-mill accountant Hank Mitchell (Bill Paxton), an employee at the Delano Feed and Grain Mill, reminisced (in voice-over) about the ingredients for a a happy life:
  • "When I was still just a kid, I remember my father telling me what he thought that it took for a man to be happy....Simple things, really. A wife he loves, a decent job, friends and neighbors who like and respect him. And for a while there, without hardly even realizing it, I had all that. I was a happy man"
• after leaving work early due to the holiday, Hank walked home to his modest house in the neighborhood, where he was greeted by his very-pregnant wife Sarah Mitchell (Bridget Fonda), who worked in the town's library
• in the afternoon, he joined his older brother Jacob Mitchell (Billy Bob Thornton) and Jacob's often-drunk friend Lou Chambers (Brent Briscoe) who drove up in Jacob's 1971 Chevrolet C-20 red pickup truck; the slow-witted, near-sighted, dopey-looking, lonely and morose, ineligible bachelor and sad-sack Jacob was buck-toothed (with an overbite) who held the bridge of his glasses together with duct tape; in the back of the truck was Jacob's golden retriever Mary Beth
• the group drove out to visit the town's cemetery to put poinsettias on the grave of the two brothers' deceased father; Jacob was distracted by Lou writing his name in the snow while urinating, and ran off to join him
• as they drove back toward town, the red fox - now with a hen in its mouth - crossed their path, causing Jacob to swerve his truck to avoid it; he crashed into a tree and as a result of the accident, Mary Beth ran off into the woods to chase the fox into a nature preserve; the threesome set off to find the fox, as both Jacob (with his hunting gun) and Lou foreshadowed what they would find: "We're collecting the dead"; while traversing through the snow, they noticed black crows gathered above them - Jacob remarked about the nature of the scavengers: "Those things are always waitin' on something to die so they can eat it, right? What a weird job"

• Jacob borrowed a beer from Lou, and as he drank it, he imitated lawyer George Hanson's (Jack Nicholson) quirky drinking routine of flapping one arm like a chicken while saying "nic-nic-nic" ("Wonk! Dit-dit") in Easy Rider (1969); Lou haphazardly threw a snowball that uncovered a small, crashed plane in the snowbound woods; they had stumbled upon an unreported crash site; inside the wreckage after pulling open the plane's side door, Hank viewed the dead pilot (Terry Hempleman) in the cockpit having his face pecked at by crows, followed by an attack that wounded him with a gash in his forehead (resembling the bird attacks in Hitchcock's The Birds (1963))

• a large black duffel-gym bag was dragged from the belly of the plane, and inside were hundreds of wrapped 100ドル dollar bills; Lou and Jacob surmised that it was "drug money" and that the pilot was a "dope dealer" with "dirty money" (Jacob: "I saw it on 20/20"); Hank suggested that it was a "police matter" and that they should immediately turn in the money; however, the tempted, broke and destitute Lou and Jacob preferred to keep the money, but Hank continued to have moral qualms: ("You want to keep it?"): he argued that it would be regarded as stealing, and they'd inevitably end up caught and would go to prison; Lou disagreed: "Nobody knows about this, but us"; Jacob added: "It's like we came out here just on a hike, And found lost treasure. Right?", and Lou concurred: "It's the American dream in a god-damn gym bag, and he just wants to walk away from it!"
• Hank continued to debate with them about the proper thing to do: "You work for the American dream. You don't steal it"; Lou argued: "Then this is even better," and he attempted to convince Hank to see the money as an easy opportunity to advance in life: "You got a beautiful wife at home. You're about to have a baby. I know you ain't pullin' down that much at the feed mill. Wouldn't you love to have a piece of this?"; the two were able to easily convince Hank to at least keep the money for themselves for awhile, hidden away until they could confirm one way or the other if anyone was looking for it: ("Hank, why, why turn it in until we know whether or not somebody's lookin' for it?")
• ultimately, Hank was persuaded by the others to keep the money, but only under his firm conditions: "Suppose I was the one to keep it?...Just till spring, till they find the plane....Then, if you're right and nobody mentions the money, we split it up, and we all leave town...That's the only way I'll do it. Otherwise, we can just turn it in right now"; he forced them to agree to his demanding terms - that he would be in charge of the money until the springtime thaw when the plane would undoubtedly be found; at that point, they could see whether anyone claimed the money; if not, they could divide up the money into equal shares amongst themselves, and leave town
• the three chuckled as they began to count the bundles of 100ドル dollar bills back at the truck as it turned dark; the haul amounted to 4ドル.4 million dollars; they were interrupted by the arrival of Sheriff Carl Jenkins (Chelcie Ross), who pulled up after noticing Jacob's truck by the side of the road; as Hank innocently chatted with the Sheriff, Jacob and Lou sat in the truck; when the Sheriff was about to leave, Jacob walked back to greet the Sheriff and foolishly asked Hank: "Did you tell him about the plane? It sou-sounded like a plane"; Hank was able to deflect the question: ("Uh, I don't know what he heard. You know he's always hearing s--t"), and he escaped further inquiries, temporarily

• on the way back into town, Hank was exasperated by the stupidity of Jacob's question and threatened to destroy the money: "You want me to burn the money?! I am not going to prison over this! If it looks like there's even the slightest chance of us getting caught, I swear to God, it's all gonna vanish! Do you understand?"; as they dropped Lou off at his home, Hank was worried that Lou could keep their "secret" from his wife Nancy Chambers (Becky Ann Baker)
• only moments after returning home, Hank asked his wife Sarah a hypothetical question that hinted at what had happened: "What if you were walking in the woods...and you found a bag full of money, Let's say 4ドル million. Would you keep it?"; she answered that it would be stealing if it was "lost money" or someone else's money: "But I wouldn't take it. That's just me. I wouldn't"; after dumping the money onto a table from the duffel bag, Hank now tried to persuade Sarah that it was completely reasonable to keep the money: "If we keep it, we never have to worry about money again....nobody gets hurt by us keeping it. I mean, that's what makes it a crime, doesn't it, somebody getting hurt?"; she reminded him that it was still "against the law" and would send him to jail if caught; Hank described the pact he had made with his buddies: "We sit on it, we see what happens. If somebody comes searching for it, then we just burn it and that will be that. There's no risk. We'll always be in control...It seems crazy just to give it up. I mean, before we know if anybody's searching for it"
• later after watching the Times Square ball drop on TV, in the middle of the night, Sarah awoke in bed and began scheming; she deviously proposed for Hank to hide their guilt - by replacing some of the money back in the downed plane without telling either Jacob or Lou: "You have to go back and return some of the money...a lot, like 500,000ドル. You see, that way when they find the plane, they'll assume nobody's been there yet. It'll put us beyond suspicion...We have to be careful. We have to be thinking ahead all the time"
• the next day, Hank asked Jacob to accompany him to the crash site and function as a "lookout" (to provide a decoy by pretending to change a flat tire on Hank's 1966 Volvo station wagon); meanwhile, Hank would return to the plane and replace some of the money to avoid suspicion, although he told Jacob that all he was doing was re-positioning the pilot: ("I moved the pilot. Come on, we gotta go put him back like he was")
• while Hank was at the plane, elderly neighboring farmer Dwight Stephanson (Tom Carey) appeared on his snowmobile; when he proposed to Jacob that they search in the woods (near the plane) for the pesky fox, Jacob panicked and bludgeoned Dwight with a crowbar; Hank returned, and believing that Dwight was dead, he felt he must protect his dim-witted brother; Hank proposed to drive Dwight's body on the snowmobile into a nearby park to hide his body, and would then reconnect with Jacob
• after Jacob drove off, to Hank's surprise, Dwight revived - and suggested calling the police to report Jacob's assault; to silence him, Hank suffocated Dwight to death and then created a fake accident scene by steering the snowmobile (with Dwight in the driver's seat) off a bridge embankment; Jacob arrived to pick up Hank on the bridge over Anders Creek, and forcefully wanted to confess to everything: "We're just gonna tell everybody the truth. Just gonna tell 'em about the money and everything," but Hank dissuaded him; Hank shocked Jacob by admitting to the murder: "You didn't kill him...He was alive when you left. I smothered him. I guess that makes it my decision"
• once Hank returned home, he told Sarah that he hoped that evidence of their tracks near the woods and the plane, or any blood stains in the snow, would be covered up by a new snowfall; they watched a TV news report about the snowmobile crash; Sarah worried: "I wish you hadn't told Jacob. I wish he still thought that he did it....it scares me. What if he tells somebody?"; she calmly reasoned that Hank felt "trapped" and had no other alternative but to murder Stephanson

• Hank was saddled with nagging regrets and guilt over the murder of the farmer, and continued worries about Jacob's tendency to foul things up; during his next work-day's lunch break, Hank met with Jacob at the family farm, who made the surprise announcement that he planned to remain in town after springtime to rebuild their dream homestead: ("I'm gonna buy it back. I'm gonna fix it up. I'm gonna rebuild it just like it was before mom and dad died"); Jacob's change of plans went against the group's pact to split up the money and then immediately leave town, because townsfolk wouldn't understand their newfound wealth; Hank also argued that Jacob was woefully unprepared to be a farmer: ("You gotta work it. You gotta know about machinery and seed....Fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, Drainage, irrigation, the weather? Come on, you don't know about any of that stuff. You're gonna end up just like dad")
• during their conversation, Jacob's old resentments resurfaced against Hank; Jacob ignored the fact that their father was a "bad businessman" who let the farm deteriorate, and instead blamed their father's mortgage debts on Hank's expensive 4 years of college education; ideally, Jacob felt entitled that he should be the one to restore the farm: ("I'm supposed to get the farm....This is what I want. This is, this is where I wanna be. It's my home, Hank")

• Hank stopped off at the town's library, where Sarah revealed research about a 4ドル.4 million dollar ransom for a 17 year-old wealthy heiress (Lizzie McMartin), the daughter of millionaire and paper cup manufacturer Byron McMartin; she had been kidnapped by two Bokovsky brothers (Stephen - 26, and Vernon - 35) in Bloomfield Hills, MI in late November; a few weeks later, she was found murdered and dumped in a lake; the kidnapping incident resulted in six dead; Hank realized everything now changed: "This changes it...We can't say it isn't stealing anymore...We thought it was drug money. We thought it was money that we could find"; Sarah was more relieved that the ransom money was paid in unmarked bills, and it wasn't counterfeit or marked ("This is good!") [Note: By film's end, this was proven to be untrue.]
• in the middle of the night, during a full moon, Hank was awakened by noises from outside; a drunken Lou was at his front door, playfully calling out "Mr. Accountant" and demanding "a tiny withdrawal" - i.e., one of the wrapped packets of 100ドルs; he claimed: "I want my share...part of that is my money"; Hank reminded Lou that the deal was to wait and decide whether the money was safe to keep, and again threatened to burn the money; Lou threateningly alluded to how he might squeal to Sheriff Carl Jenkins if his demands weren't met, since he had learned a "little secret" from Jacob about Dwight's murder; Hank tried to reason with Lou: ("We're all in this together. If one of us goes to jail, we all do"), but Lou argued that he had recklessly overspent and was broke: ("I need my share, Hank!"); Hank lied about how the money was a "day's drive" away - stashed for safety's sake in a storage locker above the interstate, and gave Lou 40ドル of his own money
• shortly later, Sarah gave birth to a baby girl (Amanda), and Jacob paid a visit to the hospital with a gift (of his own childhood's stuffed bear); after learning from Jacob that Lou had lost money gambling at a casino, Hank confronted Jacob about telling Lou the truth behind Dwight's death: ("How could you have told him that, huh?"); Hank demanded to know why he had been betrayed and why Jacob was taking "sides"; he insisted that Jacob reaffirm his loyalty to him: ("I wanna know, me or Lou?") - Jacob vowed to never betray his brother Hank: ("I'd pick you. You're my brother")
• moments later in the hospital while breast-feeding her baby, the ever-scheming Sarah strongly suggested that Hank buy a small tape recorder to frame the troublesome Lou by having him jokingly confess to a killing; Hank was instructed to "tape Lou confessing to Stephanson's murder" after getting him drunk; the avaricious Sarah was extremely persuasive in trying to eliminate Lou from acquiring his share of the ransom money, by getting him to reveal compromising information: "We should at least try, shouldn't we? We can't lose anything by trying, right?"
• during a private conversation, Hank tried to be supportive of Jacob by coyly suggesting that he would help him buy back the family farm, but then bargained that he had to exchange the favor; he stressed that Lou was a terrible risk to both of them: ("He can put us both in jail, Jacob...I can't afford to go to prison, Jacob"); he urged that Jacob should help him to trick and coax Lou to join them for a night of drinking for their nefarious plans; (offscreen) Jacob phoned Lou and arranged for the gathering
• unannounced, Hank invited Jacob over for dinner; Sarah was a bit taken aback by Jacob's presence - the couple was very on-edge and worried about how prone Jacob was to making mistakes: (Sarah: "If he stays, we get caught...It's just a matter of time before he screws up"); during dinner conversation, although Hank appeared clueless about their father's failings, Jacob revealed his clear insightfulness that their very desperate, indebted father had purposely committed suicide in order to provide insurance money to take care of the family: "Hank, Dad killed himself, you know that?...They were drunk, they had a wreck...He figured that, you know, all that insurance money...it'd take care of the whole deal..."; Hank was stunned by the revelation; Jacob's insinuation was that their father wouldn't have killed himself if he had the money that they had found
• later that night, after drinking heavily in the town's tavern, the threesome returned to Lou's home, where Jacob foolishly convinced Lou that Hank would rat out the two of them: (Lou: "I bet you would rat on us just to get off the hook, now, wouldn't ya?"); then, Jacob proposed doing more play-acting, and Lou was successfully tricked into vowing to the Sheriff that he had murdered Dwight: ("It's about Dwight Stephanson....He didn't die in an accident... No, no, I killed him....I suffocated him with his own scarf, and then I just shoved him off the bridge into Anders Creek. I made it look like an accident"); Hank had switched on the recorder to capture his confession, and then held up the recorder and played back Lou's incriminating words; Lou was confused and asked quizzically: "You taped this?...Why would you do that, Hank?"
• Hank described how the Sheriff would react if both of them entered his office with counter-accusations - the Sheriff would surely believe employed, college-educated Hank over the alcoholic redneck Lou - ("a 40-year-old unemployed high school dropout who's proud when people call him the town drunk"); when Lou realized he was being set up and conspired against by BOTH of them in order to even the odds and keep him from being a blackmailer, he angrily grabbed his Winchester shot-gun and threatened Hank to give him the tape; Jacob raced outside to his truck for his hunting rifle and then - to save his brother, he nervously shot Lou dead in the doorway
• with all the commotion and gunshot, Lou's wife Nancy appeared from upstairs and witnessed the dispute - she saw her dead husband on the living room floor and grappled with Hank; she noticed Lou's shotgun on the floor and grabbed it; after Hank wrestled the shotgun from her, she raced into the kitchen, seized her Smith & Wesson hand-gun, and began firing wildly at Hank; he retaliated with Lou's shotgun in his hands and shot her dead; before the police arrived, Hank suggested exculpatory testimony for Jacob to practice and describe, in order to clear them of any wrong-doing
• after police questioning by Sheriff Jenkins of Hank and Jacob (separately), the authorities were convinced by the bloody evidence that a domestic quarrel between the Chambers couple had ended with the crazed and drunken Lou shot-gunning his wife (holding a pistol) to death in the kitchen, after which Jacob outside at his truck was forced to kill Lou to save Hank's life in an act of self-defense

• a brief funeral ceremony was held at the church and cemetery; Jacob remained morose over the death of his friend Lou; after Jacob was heavily drinking by himself in a bar, Sheriff Jenkins found him sitting passed out in an armchair in Lou's house; the Sheriff felt obligated to bring him over to Hank's place for observation; Jacob confided to Hank about how he felt "evil"
• in the next sequence during a trip with Hank to retrieve his truck parked outside Lou's house, Jacob was hopeful - in a heartfelt dialogue - that the money could help set his life straight: "You know, maybe I can get a family of my own now. I mean, with the money and all....Don't you think somebody would marry me If I'm rich?"; he admitted that the only girl, Carrie Richards, who went steady with him for a month, was paid 100ドル by her friends; Jacob revealed his utter loneliness: "God, Hank, you know, I've never - I've never even kissed a girl before. And you know what? If being rich will change that, I'm all for it. I don't care. I just wanna feel it, you know? I just wanna know what people do, you know? I don't care if it's 'cause of the money"; he was hopeful that he could be happy by buying back the family farm, by meeting a nice girl ("a normal woman"), having lots of kids, and sitting around and telling stories on the porch
• in town, the Sheriff asked for assistance the following afternoon at 3 pm from Hank (with Jacob) to aid an FBI agent: "Seems they're looking for a lost plane"; in the meantime, tensions flared with Hank's wife when he suggested that she leave and flee with the money and the baby; he was frazzled: "It wouldn't be that hard for somebody to just put it all together. There's the plane and, and Stephanson. There's Lou and Nancy"; Sarah reassured Hank - "You're just a normal guy, A nice, sweet, normal guy....Nobody would ever believe that you'd be capable of doing what you've done"
• during a brief interview in the Sheriff's office while FBI agent Neil Baxter (Gary Cole) took notes, Hank and Jacob claimed they heard a noise (from either a plane or a snowmobile), but no crash; as they left, the agent requested a trip out to the nature preserve: "Do you think you could take us out there?"; the agent cryptically added: "Lookin' for a plane"
• once Hank returned home, Sarah grew skeptical that nothing made sense, and speculated that the FBI agent was an imposter - in fact, from her research, she asked Hank if one of the two kidnapping brothers pictured in her researched newspaper articles resembled the "agent" he had spoken with; she worried that if Hank, Jacob and the Sheriff led the agent into the woods, they would be executed: "He's gonna shoot all three of you, Hank...so he can get rid of the witnesses"; in one of the key dialogues in the film, Sarah proposed another "plan" to try and avoid having Hank shot, but he became exasperated with her disastrous plans:
  • "A plan? Like the one to take the money back to the plane, and we end up killing Stephanson? Or maybe the one where we tape Lou, and two more people end up dead. Is that the sort of plan you're thinkin' of?"
• Hank vowed to end everything by returning the money: "I'm takin' the money back right now, all of it....I'm gonna put it back, and everything's gonna be just like it used to be" - but Sarah would have none of it; in an impassioned and ranting speech, she manipulatively urged them to keep the money to better their meager domestic lives:
  • "Is that what you think you want? Walking off to the feed store every morning for the next 30 years, waiting for Tom Butler to retire or die so you can finally get a raise? And what about Amanda? Do you think she's gonna like growing up in somebody else's hand-me-down clothes? Playing with some kid's old toys because we can never afford to buy her anything new?... And me. What about me? Spending the rest of my life, 8 hours a day, with a fake smile plastered on my face checking out books, and then coming home to cook dinner for you. The same meals over and over again, whatever the week's coupons will allow, only going out to restaurants for special occasions, birthdays or anniversaries. And even then having to watch what we order, skipping the appetizer, coming home for dessert. You think that's gonna make me happy?"
• Sarah also suggested that without the money, Jacob would have to go back to the "welfare office" for support, but would probably die prematurely due to the loss of his good buddy Lou; she ended her speech with caustic sarcasm: "Sounds wonderful, doesn't it? Everything just like it used to be"
• the next morning, Sarah phoned the FBI office and discovered that there was no "Neil Baxter" working there; she quickly relayed the information to Hank to alert and warn him: ("It's him, Hank. Come home. You gotta get out of there...He's gonna shoot you both"); Hank felt obligated and pressured to remain with the Sheriff, but in order to defend himself, he stole a revolver (and ammo) from the Sheriff's locked gun cabinet and desk in the office before the threesome headed out to the woods and nature preserve to search for a plane; as they arrived, Jacob pulled up in his truck to aid in the search; he mentioned he had spoken to Sarah, and felt better after a night of heavy drinking
• the Sheriff suggested a strategy of splitting up to efficiently cover more territory; although Hank located the plane first, he didn't report his finding; as he moved away from the plane, he and the others were alerted by the Sheriff with a gun-blast that he had located the plane; Hank attempted to shout out and warn the Sheriff that FBI agent Baxter was an imposter: ("Make him show you his badge....He's got a gun! He's not FBI. He's lying"); Baxter came up behind the Sheriff and shot him dead; at gunpoint, Baxter demanded from Hank: "Where's my money?"; he grabbed Hank and ordered him to retrieve his money from inside the plane; after crawling into the plane, in a tense sequence, Hank struggled to load bullets into his gun, and then claimed he had found the bag of money; outside the plane, Hank held his gun on Baxter who was taken aback: "So you had a piece, huh? But you're not the cold-blooded type, are you, Mr. Mitchell? Looks like we're both gonna have an awful lot of explaining to do"; Hank quipped: "Just me" - before shooting him point-blank in the head

• Hank struggled to convince Jacob that they had to develop another story to tell the authorities: ("You understand what we gotta say?"), but Jacob was sickened by the continued lies and didn't believe that they could talk their way out of avoiding prosecution: ("We can't do this, Hank...We're gonna have to tell on ourselves"); Hank felt otherwise: "Yeah, it's gonna work. It's perfect. We just gotta get through the next couple of hours, And then we're home. We're home-free"; the two both disagreed about how to proceed - should they create another concocted tale, or tell the truth and end up in jail?

• Jacob simply stated: "I wish somebody else had found that money"; he also claimed that he couldn't live with all the guilt, deceptions and bad memories: "I don't wanna sit around the rest of my life thinking about this s--t. I can't do it, sit on the porch and drink. I can't do it, so you're gonna have to do it"; Hank kept trying to convince him: "Couple more hours, we'll be home"; Jacob realized that his life wasn't worth living anymore, when he compared it to his brother Hank: "You can do this, and it's gonna be perfect for you. And you got something, you got something to go on for, Hank, and you know it"
• the beaten-down Jacob was hinting that he wanted to end his lonely, poor and miserable life - by committing suicide - it would be a perfect ending for Jacob, just like their father's sacrifice: "I don't wanna be here...Come on, Hank. Let me do something"; he threatened that if Hank wouldn't sacrifice him, then he would have to kill himself: ("But if you don't do it, then I'm gonna do it, and then we're gonna both gonna be f--ked, aren't we? We don't need to both be f--ked. I'll-I'll do it, Hank, if you don't, I'm telling you I will"); as Jacob put a gun to his head, Hank yelled out for Jacob to stop, and then used Baxter's gun to shoot and kill Jacob - it would be the most believable alibi to have "bad guy" Baxter charged with both murders: "Make it look like the bad guy did it, Hank" [Note: This mercy killing was reminiscent of the conclusion of Of Mice and Men.]
• afterwards, during an informational session with two authentic FBI agents Renkins (Bob Davis) and Freemont (Peter Syvertsen), Hank was told that the imposter agent was actually Vernon Bokovsky, and that his brother was the dead pilot; as Sarah had discovered, they had demanded a ransom of 4ドル.4 million after kidnapping and killing their female hostage, who they shot and dumped in a lake; the agents also revealed that about 10% of the ransom bills' serial numbers were recorded (not marked), so it would be impossible to know which bills could be tracked down if spent: ("Now it's simply a matter of waiting for the numbers to turn up"); Hank realized that he would eventually be caught if he began to spend the money
• upon his return home, Hank dumped out the contents of the duffel bag in his living room, and began to burn the money in their fireplace, as Sarah protested and begged for him to reconsider: "Hank, we can run with it. We could leave the country. We could go to South America or to Australia or someplace far away"; he pushed her away
• in the book-ended conclusion, Hank was in deep reflection almost every day - with a narrated voice-over - about his constantly-haunting memories: "There are days when I manage not to think of anything at all. Not the money, or the murders, or Jacob. Days when Sarah and I try to pretend that we're just like everyone else, as if none of it had ever happened, but those days are few and far between"; Hank stood outside the family farm that Jacob had wanted to rebuild, with major regrets about what could have been
• [Note: Body Count: (1) Farmer Dwight Stephanson - suffocated by Hank, (2) Lou Chambers - shot by Jacob, (3) Nancy Chambers - shot by Hank, (4) Sheriff Jenkins - shot by fake agent Baxter, (5) Baxter - shot by Hank, (6) Jacob - shot by Hank; four of the film's six murders were committed by Hank.]