9. Jacob (A Simple Plan)
In Sam Raimi's psychological thriller A Simple Plan, Billy Bob Thornton and Bill Paxton play brothers who stumble upon a duffel bag full of money in a crashed airplane. As they try to cover their tracks in order to keep the money, the run into issues with government officials trying to recover the money and the criminals in search of it. But most of all, the biggest obstacle that they face is themselves. The brothers and Bill Paxton's wife (Bridget Fonda) go to remarkable and despicable lows in order to keep their new-found financial gains a secret. When all is said and done, Billy Bob Thornton's Jacob cannot take it anymore, having descended to the depths of cruelty and evil he never thought possible. In a bizarre Mexican stand-off, he is mercifully killed by his brother. This is a highly underwatched film that is out of character for Sam Raimi, who is best known for his camp gore Evil Dead trilogy and the recent Spiderman films. In the relatively humorless A Simple Plan, his characters wrestle with the dark consequences of their even darker actions.