Plot
The film opens with Injun Joe (Eric Schweig) accepting a job from Doctor Robinson (William Newman). Then Tom Sawyer (Jonathan Taylor Thomas) is running away from home. He and his friends ride down the Mississippi River on a raft, but hit a sharp rock, which throws Tom into the water. His friends find him washed up on the shore, and Tom finds it was Huck Finn (Brad Renfro) who carried him to safety. Huck learns of an unusual way to remove warts - by taking a dead cat to the graveyard at night. There they witness Doctor Robinson being murdered by Injun Joe.
The town drunk, Muff Potter (Michael McShane) is framed for the murder; unfortunately, Tom and Huck had signed an oath saying that if either of them came forward about it, they would drop dead and rot. The duo then goes on a search for Injun Joe's treasure map (which he found in Vic Murrell's coffin), so they can declare Muff Potter innocent and still keep their oath. The only problem is, the map is in Injun Joe's pocket. After Injun Joe finds the first treasure, he burns the map and discovers that Tom was a witness to the murder. He finds Tom and warns him that if he ever told anybody what he knew, he will kill him. However, at the time, the entire town thought he was dead, and the friendship between Tom and Huck starts to decline because of the fact that their evidence (the map) to prove Muff innocent, while preserving their oath, is destroyed.
At the trial of Muff Potter, Tom decides that his friendship with Muff is more important than his oath with Huck and tells the truth to the court, which finds Muff innocent of all charges and goes after Injun Joe. As a result, Injun Joe decides to hold up his end of the bargain by killing Tom. Huck becomes angry with Tom for breaking their oath and leaves town. During a festival the next day, a group of children, including Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher (Rachael Leigh Cook), a girl whom Tom has expressed romantic interest previously in the film, enter the caves where Tom and Becky become lost. They stumble upon Injun Joe (who was looking for Tom) in McDougal's Cave. He traps them, but Tom and Becky manage to escape. Then they find the treasure and Tom tells Becky to go get her father and bring him back.
Just then, Injun Joe finds Tom, and again tries to kill him. Huck returns to help save Tom, and battles Injun Joe, who then falls into a chasm. The boys reconcile, and are declared heroes by the people. Tom is praised on the front page of the newspaper, and Widow Douglas (Marian Seldes) decides to adopt Huck Finn.
Read more about this topic: Tom And Huck
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.”
—Jane Rule (b. 1931)
“Trade and the streets ensnare us,
Our bodies are weak and worn;
We plot and corrupt each other,
And we despoil the unborn.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)