The Postman

The Postman_360P

I suppose one could say that parts of this film aren't as bad as parts of "Waterworld," but that obviously doesn't pay it any compliments. Actually, this film reminds me a lot of the old Italian post-apocalyptic thriller "The New Barbarians" (I Nuovi barbari,(1982)) - except that it's nowhere near as fun. The two films share much the same plot. But the Italian film cost less than $200,000 instead of tens of millions, has a lot of funky looking cars instead of horses, takes place in gravel pits rather than the grand Northwest, and the rape scene is very gay. But it is fast paced, completely unpretentious, unabashedly ridiculous - a real hoot. The acting in "The Postman" is just as bad as that in the Italian film, but the dialog is far worse without being any funnier, the characters much less interesting. And it drags and drags. Also, there's nowhere near the sheer amount of action that there is in the Italian film. And it's so pretentious, you'll look for cues for genuflection. Actually, pretty depressing - after watching this, you'll realize there was nothing worth preserving from apocalypse. Overall a B-movie pretending to be an A-movie, ending up just a plain old bad movie.

Not until this was released on blu ray did i manage to catch The Postman.What have i been missing all these years - absolutely nothing apart from the best part of three hours i wont get back. Its interesting watching this in light of more recent post apocalyptic flops but The Postman takes the biscuit. The script is totally overloaded with schmaltz - a pure glucose overdose. The cast seem to be taking the whole thing so seriously when they are participating in a joke. The only good thing about the movie is Will Pattons performance as the bad guy but his eyesight is failing as he cannot recognise Costner without his facial hair. It also is annoying that Ribisi (playing a loon again) and Russo (playing a bad ass again) are offed in the first half hour as they were entertaining. But hey great looking blu ray.

Top 10 things I would rather do than watch this film ever again. #10. Listen to Bobby McFarren's "Don't Worry Be Happy" for two hours straight. #9. Beat myself in the head continuously with a 9 iron while watching a complete round of LPGA golf. #8. Quit my job and join the postal service. #7. Watch Waterworld again....wait....yeah OK, watch Waterwold. #6. Spend an afternoon antique shopping with my mother in law on super bowl Sunday. #5. Eating five pounds of raw squid and power vomit for two hours. #4. Ride one leg of the Tour De France on a bike with a fireplace poker for a seat. #3. Get stuck in an small, sweaty, service elevator with Bjork, Bobcat Goldthwait, and Fran Drescher for two hours. #2. Eat and poop 10 large pinecones. The pokey kind, not the flakey kind. #1. Turn this director's cut edition I rented into some sort of pointy edged weapon, then hunt and kill Kevin Costner for sport with it. Preferably on horseback or jetski.

It is easy to understand why many people hate this movie. Someone with a big influence started to bash it in hollywood, all the others brats (critics) followed, an ongoing rumour about how bad this movie is started to go around, and people who worship Jean-Claude Van Damme followed. I read one of the comment saying how bad this movie is because it got 5 Razzies. First I laughed, then I was sad. So many people cannot make a judgment on their own. If you can't like a movie because it got Razzies, and if you always like movies who get Oscars, you should not express your opinion because we already know it. This is not the perfect movie. The ending (the very last scene when America is back to normal) really shouldn't exist. The part with Tom Petty indeed is boring. But I think it's the Costner movie closest to Dances with the Wolves in terms of direction. Anyway, I really liked the movie, and the book, though very different, is good too. Give it a chance, and don't rent it saying it will be bad. Listen to yourself, there's no one else more worth listening to.

"The Postman" is one of those films that has become almost synonymous with the concept of "lousy, awful, horrible, terrible, stinking mess of a movie." Like "Plan 9 from Outer Space," "Ishtar," or "Gigli," it is sometimes invoked in this manner on Internet message boards or in chatter between friends. But is "The Postman" truly such a horrible disaster? I would argue that its bad reputation is overdone. Make no mistake, this movie is no "Citizen Kane." There is no way, by any stretch of the imagination, that this could be called a "great" movie. But every week B-movies that are orders of magnitude worse come out. What is it about this one that accounts for its enduring lousy reputation? This in itself is an interesting question. Part of the answer has to do with Kevin Costner. It is hard to imagine now, but at one time (especially in the wake of "Dances with Wolves") his reputation in Hollywood was towering and unassailable. Costner squandered his mega-star status with a series of expensive yet mediocre duds such as this one, and in the end "The Postman's" crime is not that it is a truly terrible movie, but that it is simply a not-great movie that deflated the public's hopes and expectations of what Kevin Costner film should be. The curse of too-high expectations. The worst aspect of this movie is its occasional pomposity and self-importance, derived from Costner's own enormous mid-90s ego, and it is easy to laugh at the final scene or various dramatic sequences with swirling symphonic music and glistening slo-mo shots. But if you can get beyond this and look at the movie as just a somewhat entertaining way to pass a few hours, it really isn't that bad, especially if you are a fan of the "dark future" genre of films. Will Patton in particular provides a good, convincing performance, as do a number of other minor characters. And the world of "The Postman" -- a decayed, post-apocalyptic, decentralized America where the federal government has collapsed -- is interesting in its own right. Remember, this film was borne of the early/mid 1990s, a time that gave us Timothy McVeigh, anti-government sentiment, Waco, and fear about "militias." There was a sense in the air that America could possibly disintegrate and fragment into local areas battling each other in the long run. This world view seems very alien in the post-9-11 era, where there is much more of a consciousness of being an American, "rallying around the flag," and the role of the federal government as a powerful military force, for good or for ill. Nowadays fear of outsiders and terrorism has largely replaced fears of internal anarchy and domestic unraveling. "The Postman" reminds us that not so long ago America envisioned its dark possible futures in a very different way than it currently does, and this in itself is instructive and worth pondering.

First of all...I liked it...I really did! It is a film by Kevin Costner, starring Kevin Costner, surrounds Kevin Costner's character, and a movie that is simply...Kevin Costner. But if you liked Kevin Costner in such films as "Dances With Wolves", "Robin Hood", "The Bodyguard", and even slightly in "Waterworld", then you will like this film. I know it is three hours long (I got refills on both the popcorn and super-size soda and still ran out), but I didn't find it as unbearable as those less-than-perfect-movie-critics have claimed. I found the time to go by quite like you would expect three hours to go by and didn't find myself being bored or dozing off. Yes, the story line was a bit predictable and Kevin played the reluctant hero that he is known for...but I liked it. Bottom line...if you want to do something nice for your postman, tell them you are going to go see the film in their honor...because like their motto says...not rain, nor shine, nor sleet, nor nothing...not even the lack of being a country will stop the mail from getting through.

I own this movie on DVD, I've seen this movie a number of times, and it is overall better than 80% of the commercial movies being released these days. Those of you familiar with statistics and "normal" distributions, look at the "user ratings" for this movie. The "1" ratings are bogus. Look at the shape of the distribution, and you'll see that the valid rating for this movie is somewhere between 7 and 8, which are the most "common" ratings, which makes perfect sense. A 7.5 on a 10 point scale is where most people would rate it. It has such an uplifting story of a reconstruction after a war, and banning together to fight evil, that I don't see how anyone with a heart could give it less than about 6 or 7. See it if you haven't already! PS - My old college friend Dan von Bargen is in this as Sheriff Briscoe of Pineview, who near the end shouts "Ride Postman, ride!" Unfortunately Dan died in 2015.

This film was excellent. The acting ranged from average to good, the fight scenes were convincing, the costume design was superve, and the set design phenomenal. The problem with this film is, that it's sci-fi, and as we all know, sci-fi has that nasty habit of making people think. And hay, who likes to do that nowadays? This film asks the question...what if, right now, all of civilization fell apart. no more super-market, no more police, no more government. The truth of all things would be revealed...money would be just green paper, your television would be a piece of junk, and everything that you lived for would take a back seat to survival. Who would you be? a Warrior, a wonderer, a tyrant, a diplomat? would the meek inhereit the earth? would the rich and powerful be pathetic and powerless when their paper-empires crumble in the nuclear war? and America...would that dream of the land of the free, home of the brave survive after it's government has been destroyed? and who would preserve it? who would insure that after the End, the government of the people, by the people and for the people would not parish from the Earth? would you? This film is a must-see for thinking people...for all you brainless slaves of the critics...stay home and watch Titanick(Hurl!) for the tenth time.

I truly do NOT understand why The Postman was attacked as viscously as it was by the film media (there films much more worthy of the Golden Raspberry Awards in 1997). I loved this film and was very impressed with the loving amount of dedication that it demonstrates on the part of the actors, writers and director. This was a GOOD movie: it had a strong and intelligent story; excellent and interesting characters; and real feel for the post-Apocalypse genre. I felt that Kevin Costner's everyman act worked beautifully in this film and created a sense of reality for the character and of his situation. As far as the sci-fi novel by David Brin, this film exceeded it in every way possible. Where Brin had to rely on cheezy sci-fi standards (like supersoldiers) to resolve his story, this film does using only two men, both frauds, and both with radically different understandings of what constitutes a proper society. That is what made this film great (and I rarely use the term great), that this film was essentially an examination of America and what America means. It was a parable of sorts about the types of men Americans are and what they are capable of (notice that the head bad-guy had a traditional, classical education, while Costner did not; he appreciated these things but they were not at the center of his belief system... I wonder why). While I do not agree with every aspect of this film (I am a Medievalist and a Platonist, so I don't necessarily feel the same way about the Western Canon that the film-maker may have), I still find it to be a beautiful reflection on the psyche of the American everyman. America has a tradition of rejecting the absolutist ideals of the past in favor of the pragmatic relativism of today, and I think that this film is a parable of the divorce of America from the traditions of Europe. Overall, this is a complex and entertaining film and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in examinations of American culture and tradition, perhaps as a double feature with Citizen Cane (I am not, however, claiming that the Postman was as good a film as Citizen Cane, only that they have a similar theme... what does it mean to be an American?).