A SIMPLE PLAN (1998)
BBC One, 11.25pm
The director Sam Raimi consulted his former collaborators the Coen brothers about shooting this wintry thriller in deep-frozen Minnesota. Based on Scott Smith’s bestseller, A Simple Plan 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. (123min)
MultiChannel
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TRADING PLACES (1983)
Film4, 9pm
The Christmassy feelgood fable that helped to launch Eddie Murphy to stardom, Trading Paces puts a 1980s spin on the eternal debate about nature versus nurture. The director John Landis reunites 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. (118min)
THE MISSOURI BREAKS (1976)
ITV4, 10.45pm
Arthur Penn’s ponderous western is notable for its unique screen pairing of Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson, but little else. The plot is rambling, while Brando’s cross-dressing gunslinger belongs in a different film from Nicholson’s horse-rustling gang leader. Brando’s 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 killed his career. (126min)