The Postman is a 1997 epically boring film starring Kevin Costner, Olivia Williams, and Larenz Tate.
I’m not entirely sure what killed Kevin Costner’s career. But the Postman certainly couldn’t have helped. In a nutshell – it’s a terrible film.
For starters, it goes forever. Seriously. Some films seem long. The Postman seems like it’s never going to end. Like you’re going to get stuck in some Groundhog Day-like time warp where whenever you turn on a television, anywhere, the Postman will still be on.
It truly is woeful. The plot is mostly incomprehensible and the few times it makes any kind of sense you realise how incredibly silly it is.
It’s 2013 and a nuclear war or whatever has wiped out civilisation as we knew it. Costner plays a drifter, basically his character from Waterworld but on land who gets captured by a group of survivors but he escapes and takes refuge in a jeep where he finds the skeleton of a mailman and a mail bag. He decides to deliver the letters and this somehow leads him to decide he needs to save humanity and restore order to the universe. Or some shit like that. Seriously. I didn’t make that up. That really is the plot.
In order to be a successful action movie hero, I think it’s probably necessary to have a fairly massive ego. But Kevin Costner’s must be planetary in size. Like, cosmic.
Don't get me wrong, I don't mind him as an actor. I think I just prefer him in films he hasn't directed himself. But after his huge success with Dances with Wolves (which is a very good film) he seemed to get locked into this ‘directing himself as the hero’ spiral where every movie he did had to feature him saving humanity. First came Waterworld (which is not an awful film. It’s bad, it’s just not as bad as people think it is), and then hot on the heels of that came this steaming pile.
Usually I can find some merit even in the most God-awful movies. But there’s literally nothing to like about the Postman. The ‘post-apocalyptic’ world is so badly done it seems like nothing has changed except people ride horses instead of drive cars. The acting is all over the place. The story (such as it is) falls to pieces like a matchstick house the second you give it any kind of serious thought, there’s plot holes the size of canyons, the music is hopelessly mismatched to the scenes it scores, and the script is like one of those ambling stories you’d write in high school for an assignment where you had to write a certain number of words but got stuck at like, 300. So you’d just make up stupid tangents and repeat things over and over again until you got to 1000 words. It’s drivel. It’s clichéd, and so over the top that it might have worked as satire if it’s hand wasn’t firmly over its heart the entire time.
I really want to stop but I can’t. This film is sort of what I imagine the result would be if some redneck American Republicans got together, got loaded on bourbon, and started fantasizing about what would happen if ‘we was runnin things’. For one thing, people in Costner's growing band of Merry Postmen keep going on about the ‘Reformed Congress of the United States’, whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean.
In directing this film, Costner committed a cardinal sin – he tried to appeal to absolutely everyone. We’ve got humour (albeit laboured), a romantic subplot, and loads of emotionally manipulative scenes that I think are supposed to induce clapping and cheering, but instead I found myself dry reaching and wondering how long this stupid film had to go. I wanted to be able to laugh at these scenes, in a so-bad-it’s-good way, but I just couldn’t. In trying to appeal to all and offend no-one, the film just winds up being incredibly unappealing in every way.
It's staggering to think how bad this film is when compared to Costner’s directorial debut Dances with Wolves. The Postman was a shitty idea and it’s made worse by being poorly executed.
Three hours of my life (wait…I think it might actually still be going) that I really, really wish I could get back.
