Twenty years ago a high school buddy and I went to see A Simple Plan. We went into the theater with short sleeves on and, leaving through the windowless stairwell exit, we were shocked to discover everything had been covered in snow by the time we came out. It was as if the movie had literally transported us to its dreadfully claustrophobic winter land.

Weather coincidences aside, A Simple Plan is an extremely effective crime thriller. It may even be my favorite book-to-film adaptation. The most you can hope for from a typical adaptation is it won’t change too much. Scott Smith, who has only published two novels, didn’t write an adaptation so much as he wrote a leaner, meaner draft of the original story. (His second novel, The Ruins, is one of the few long books I’ve read in a single day.) In the movie, his characters became a lot more human and sympathetic.

I chose the short trailer because the long one gives too much away. Do not—I repeat: do not go looking at related Youtube videos if you haven’t seen the movie yet.

Bill Paxton plays Hank Mitchell, a man of average intelligence and, in the beginning, of average morality. He’s the smart one compared to his brother Jacob (Billy Bob Thorton) whose literary cousin could very well be Lennie Small. Though Hank is the smart one, at times snobbishly so, there are key scenes in which Jacob reveals he knows a lot more than Hank suspects, particularly regarding family matters and accurately reading the cards life dealt ’em. (There’s a scene in which Jacob talks about the only girlfriend he’s ever had and it’s at once funny and heartbreaking.)

While searching for their dog in the snowy Minnesota woods, the brothers discover a crashed plane containing millions of dollars. Unfortunately for Hank, Jacob’s dimwitted buddy Lou (Brent Briscoe from Larry Clark’s Another Day in Paradise) is also wrapped up into the plot; he plays the wild card who’s integral to these types of movies and he’s scarily good at the job. Described as “a forty year old high school dropout who’s proud of people calling him the town drunk,” he can cause the whole thing to come crashing down at any moment.

The plan, as it should be, is simple: Hank will sit on the money until spring, at which point the snow will melt and the plane will be discovered by the authorities. Then they’ll know who’s looking for the money and adjust the plan accordingly. Hank warns Jacob and Lou not to tell a soul. Hank proceeds to race home and blab about the money to his wife, Sarah (Bridget Fonda).

The expression on Sarah’s face, when Hank dumps the money on the kitchen table, is pure movie magic. No matter how good a person you think you are, nothing can prepare you for staring at a load of cash like that. And nothing can prepare you for how it changes everything. Sarah is the dutiful wife who becomes the mastermind of the increasingly complex plan, acting as the puppet master for everything that follows. She becomes so immersed in the plan she becomes sinister in her tweaking of it; even as the nurse hands her her firstborn child, she immediately whispers conspiratorially about what Hank should do next.

Naturally, the plan is never as simple as it seems and, a mere twenty minutes into the film, Hank finds himself helplessly cornered by unforeseen consequences. In that regard, the film is a lot like Fargo (my favorite film of all time) and Blood Simple, and it’s no wonder the directors of those films and the director of this one have had their careers cross paths at times. Listen, I’m a guy who grew up watching the Evil Dead franchise about a billion times so I don’t say this lightly: this is Sam Raimi’s best movie, period.

The similarities it shares with John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men didn’t occur to me until recently, when I happened to read one and watch the other on the same day. Those comparisons can’t be said of Smith’s source material, which is yet another reason to cherish this movie as something special. And when you learn it was a commercial flop, a double whammy on the heels of Raimi’s disappointingly goofy The Quick and the Dead, you can kind of see how such a visionary movie director eventually got lost in Hollywood mediocrity.

This is what you get: a suspenseful plot, an excellent cast, and wonderful dialogue. I adore crime movies and consider this one among the best.

FBI agent Nate Foster (Daniel Radcliffe) is a total nerd who gets roped into going undercover as a skinhead, convinced by a colleague (Toni Collette) that white supremacy groups pose just as much of a threat, if not more, to homeland security as radical Islamic groups. She makes a good point. Early on she asserts people like Timothy McVeigh aren’t actually crazy even though it’s comforting to dismiss them as such. What’s scarier is people like him can’t be spotted in a crowd, unlike the low-level street thugs you see demonstrating in parades and redirecting the nation’s outrage away from the deeper problems.

The film suggests the outspoken hatemongers you see stirring up the controversy on TV and the internet aren’t necessarily the ones you should worry about, but we should instead focus on the smart ones who hide behind this veil of misdirection. It’s on the front line of unwitting pawns that Foster initially infiltrates the group, shaving his head and getting a pride tattoo. He quickly learns there are many layers to the real life conspiracy. The movement is meticulously designed with its hierarchy of street warriors, PR specialists, conventions, and militias. Foster is shocked to learn that his intelligence—the one thing he thought he had going against him—is actually what helps him advance within the dark network.

My first reaction to Imperium’s marketing was it seemed just a little too gimmicky. The movie sites were saying, “See Harry Potter go undercover and fight skinheads!” The trailer felt a little too much like The Departed, which I think was intentional. Meanwhile, Daniel Radcliffe’s performance, when taken out of the context of the actual movie, seemed entirely too suspicious to work, at least in the glimpses we got from the trailer.

His acting, however, is the best part of the movie. I’m a fan of the Harry Potter series, yet the more I see Radcliffe, the more I forget he ever played the boy magician. I think it’s clear he’s not trying to distance himself from his child star image, he’s simply doing it by being the real deal—an authentic actor who doesn’t feel too entitled to fully dedicate himself to the process. We’ve seen lots of stars play undercover agents, but have you ever seen one look like he was on the edge of breaking at any moment? When we see guys like Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio going undercover, they’re playing street-smart guys who happen to be good at turning the acting on or off as needed. Radcliffe is playing a guy who doesn’t have that particular skill set.

Meanwhile Toni Collette is great as always. Tracy Letts, playing a white pride radio personality (think Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, etc.) makes me wonder why the Killer Joe playwright doesn’t act more than he currently does. My only minor complaint is that although the movie doesn’t feel like Donnie Brasco or The Departed for the most part, there are certainly moments which seem a little too familiar. No, it’s not as good as those two films, and maybe not as good as American History X (though I haven’t seen it since it came out), but I did watch five movies this weekend and it was easily my favorite of the bunch.

An unusual creative decision in a movie like this is the reduced role of guns. This isn’t an action movie, nor does it want to be one. It isn’t going to have a montage of contracted assassinations or culminate in a big, bloody shootout. Imperium feels like it might be something that happens all the time, which is probably the most chilling aspect of it.

Speaking of Tracy Letts, he also appears in Elvis & Nixon, which stars Michael Shannon and Kevin Spacey as the title characters. It’s by no means a bad movie and you can currently stream it on Amazon Video. If you’re no stranger to the quality of HBO Films, it’s right along those lines in terms of production value. I’d describe it as pleasant, but not great, and having seen at least a dozen different actors portray Elvis, I always wonder how you can possibly play the guy without going over the top.