A SIMPLE PLAN (1998)
BBC One, 11.25pm; Wales, 12.05am
The director Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead) consulted his former collaborators the Coen brothers about shooting this wintry thriller in deep-frozen Minnesota. Based on Scott Smith’s bestseller, the resulting film stars Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton as small-town brothers who stumble across $4 million in the snow-covered wreck of a light plane. Their “simple plan” is to hide the money until spring, but then greed and family tensions take hold . . . Raimi plays down his usual comic-book humour in this fatalistic, finely acted neo-noir thriller. (123 min)
MultiChannel
TRADING PLACES (1983)
Film4, 9pm
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The Christmassy feelgood fable that helped to launch Eddie Murphy to stardom, Trading Places puts a 1980s spin on the eternal debate about nature versus nurture. The director John Landis is reunited with the Blues Brothers star Dan Aykroyd, this time playing an arrogant Philadelphia yuppie who is forced to swap his privileged life with Murphy’s homeless beggar to test a wager between his scheming corporate paymasters. Some of the jokes are a little strained, but the best scenes recall the sophisticated social comedies of Preston Sturges and Frank Capra. Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche steal the film as Aykroyd’s mean-minded bosses. (118 min)
THE MISSOURI BREAKS (1976)
ITV4, 10.45pm
Arthur Penn’s ponderous western is chiefly notable for its unique screen pairing of Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson. The plot is slow and rambling, while Brando’s cross-dressing gunslinger belongs in a different film from Nicholson’s horse-rustling gang leader. Brando’s eccentric decision to employ several different accents also looks like suicidal disregard for the whole project. In having his every whim pandered to, Brando’s madly self-indulgent performance pretty much killed his career. But worth seeing for this spectacle, along with the fine performances from Nicholson, Harry Dean Stanton, Randy Quaid and Frederic Forrest. (126 min)