I talk about bad movies a lot around here.
And truth be told, I do enjoy bad movies.
Even racist tracks like The Patriot have a certain morbid fascination as one attempts to comprehend how such utter filth could have been created by humans…or at least Mel Gibson.

But there is a movie, that even I can take no pleasure in.
A movie that leaves me feeling dead inside.
Dead and hollow

That movie is The Postman.

Stop, haaaay wait a minute Mr Postman!

Now often you will read bad reviews that tell you to avoid the movie in question, but this time I really really mean it.
Dont watch this one because you want to laugh at it, it isn't funny bad.
Bad isn't even the right word.

Its just pointless, unbelievably pointless.

The plot follows the story of a wandering fellow (played by Kevin Costner) in a fairly generic post apocalyptic future.
Not a really bad apocalypse as far as I can tell. There aren't mutants and people can remember what life was like before the end happened (none of that “the before time” crap you end up with.) Shits wreck up… but I've seen worse. There are still trees, for example.
I give this one a 4 out of 10 on the “Oh my gawd! The world just ended!” o'meter.


Now Kevin gets press ganged in an evil army of evil people who force folk from towns they pass through into joining their evil army to help them do evil.
Now you might think I am selling these guys a bit short with that cheesey description.
Well let me tell you a little more about their organisation.
They brand all they people they force to join their army with a number 8, to remind them of the armies 8 all important rules.
They are:

Law 1: Obey all orders without question.
Law 2: Punishment will be swift.
Law 3: Mercy is for the weak.
Law 4: Terror will defeat reason.
Law 5: Your allegiance is to the clan.
Law 6: Justice can be dictated.
Law 7: Any clansman may challenge for leadership of the clan.
Law 8: There is only one penalty: Death.

Law 1 makes sense for an army, no problem there.
Law 2 is….confusing. Its not really a law so much as a threat. Does that mean if someone is not punished quickly they cant be punished later? That seems to be the implication.
Law 3 is from Karate Kid.
Law 4 is straying into cartoon panto villain territory! We hate reason! We love terror! Why not just say they hate love and happiness and kittens and have done with it?
Law 5 I guess it meant to remind us of the KKK I guess. The Holnists are an army, rather than a clan, so that doesn't really make any sense…
Law 6 Justice can be dictated. Well, yeah, I guess it can. That is kind of a meaningless one there.
Law 7 is an interesting one we need to come back too in more detail.
Law 8 is so fucking retarded it isn't even funny. What about if a guy doesn't clean the dishes well enough? Does he get killed? That is literally the only punishment that anyone gets? “Stop biting your nails! I told you to cut that shit out! You must now die!”

When they first arrive in the evil armies camp, there is a scene designed to explain the rules, as well as how evil the bad guys are. It actually serves to highlight how moronic their entire organisation is.
The new conscripts are told to sit down and they all sit on various available barrels. One guy doesn't sit because there are not enough barrels. The general tells him he could have sat on the ground, so he disobeyed an order and so they kill him.
Wouldn't this army suffer mass desertion almost constantly?
They have gone out of their way to prove they are insane, kill their own troops for idiotic reasons and have basically done everything they can to make people they are forcing to join their army hate them as much as possible.
Remember there are no telephones or mass communication (it's the apocalypse) so if you run off or ride off, then that's that, they will never see you again, and even if they do find you months later, what are the odds they will recognise you from the hundreds of recruits (and deserters) they must go through?
And don't tell me that they hunt down all the deserters! With their recruitment methods and mornic, cartoon evil doctrine they would be losing people as quick as they gained them so the army would end up doing nothing BUT hunting down their only deserters.
Strangely the armies members are presented as super loyal and dedicated to their short, unimpressive, uncharismatic leader, and one of them deserting is presented as a strange anomaly.

Oh yeah and the army is racist too.
This goes no where and is pointless but is thrown in to emphasise that they are the bad guys…in case we didn't get that yet.

Rule seven is the best rule of all, that's why I've waited this long to talk about it.
Anyone can challenge the leader anytime they want and if you win you get to be in charge.
No seriously, that's how these people pick their leaders. A system that puts big, psychotic and violent nutters in charge rather than those who actually know any thing about command or leadership. A system where you have an incentive to kill your commander any time you think you can get away with it. Just…wow.
The baddie in the film is not a particularly big guy, so you would think his angry red neck soldiers would be picking fights with him almost constantly.
Now we are told that the last time the general was challenged he won in 5 seconds and cut off his opponents testicles and tongue (no really!)
So I guess he must be some sort of ninja kung fu master or something. Let's see how that pans out as the film develops….

Oh and the bad guy hates the American flag, and when he sees people flying it he gets mad and has them tear it down and burn it.
Yes, because bad people hate American flags.
There are no racist, militia organisations in America who wave American flags.
In fact, violent militant racists hate the American flag and want to destroy it.
Bad leaders never wrap themselves in the flag to lend legitimacy to their bad decisions. That just cant happen. Never has, never will.

You are probably starting to think “Wow Hark! You sure are taking a long time to get to the point with this review. You are explaining all this crappy nonsense, but you have yet to get to the actual story.”
And you would be right.
The reason I am taking my time in getting to the main story is that this is exactly how the movie is presented.
Huge long sequences of Kev travelling at the start.
Huge long sequences of Kev in the evil army.
Huge long sequences travelling after he leaves the army.
It is painfully boring, dragging on for what feels like days.

But finally….at long….long last…..the plot gets going.

Kev escapes team evil and runs off (like any sane person would!)
So he travels some more and then finds an old postmans uniform that he puts on and uses it to bluff his way into towns, claiming to be from a restored united states government.
And this actually does start to seem kind of interesting.
People start to believe that the government is restored and give Kevin messages to deliver. Soon various young lackies start joining him, taking messages between communities and getting the people to feel they are part of something bigger.
When they unite together, it becomes increasingly hard for the evil warlord to bully them, thus building to a climactic show down between his army and the armies of the free people.

Again, lets wait and see how that develops….

The over the top patriotism and simplistic, trite morals of this movie would be embarrassing enough, but here the patriotism is less aimed at America…and more at the US postal service.
Yes, that's right. This movie is a love letter to the US postal service.
“There used to be a postman on every street in America. They wore uniforms and hats like this one. I guess we didn't realise how important they were till they were gone” says Kevin in an attempt to give a rousing speech that just comes across as laughable.
“Ride Postman, Ride!” People yell…and strangely no one in the movie giggles (as the audience invariably will.)

So the movie is laughably stupid, overly drawn out and dull, but why do I hate it so much? What does it do to really piss me the fuck off?

The real insidious evil of this movie is that it keeps promising like something good is going to happen. Through all the boring, dull sequences of people wandering the wilderness or standing around talking about complete bollocks, there is a sense that it is headed somewhere, building up to a confrontation.
It all seems to be the set up for a huge battle that must inevitably come, as the two sides face off, freedom and hope against oppression and tyranny in the final battle for the fate of man kind.
The good guys have pushed too far and now the army of evil is coming after them, wheeling up the heavy artillery (literally!)
Surely you cant have this many people with guns in a movie without some kind of exciting sequence?
And what happens?
Law 7 happens.
Remember that one? The one that anyone can challenge the leader?
Well, Kevin challenges.
Despite being a deserter he is still a member (sure, why not?) and so the general has to fight him.

Note to all movie makers, NEVER have armies in your movies that look like they are about to fight and then something stops them.
When Kevin stopped the battle, I was pissed off at the asshole for ruining the one thing that might have made this film interesting.
The worst film for this effect is Street Fighter the movie. Now it's a total dog shit of a movie in many other ways, but it manages to pull that gimic not once but TWICE!
Seriously.

But at least now we will get to FINALLY see what kind of kick ass fighting moves the general has. He's got a sword, so maybe he is like a fencer or something?
Kevin costner is no martial artist though and his character doesn't have any real combat training, so I was wondering how this was going to play out.

They wrestle in the dirt for a little while till Kevin wins.
And that's it.

That's the pay off.

And that is why I hate this movie.

It is nearly 3 FUCKING HOURS LONG! I sat through this horse crap under the impression that I would finally get the reward of some kind of battle or action sequence and what do I get?

Kevin and the baddie, wrestling around on the ground.

This movie left me feeling cheated and tricked.
That's why I hate this film. It is boring, embarassing but most of all deceptive. It gets your hopes up and then delivers absolutely NOTHING!

Do no watch this piece of shit.

It is 3 hours you wont get back.

Kevin Costner needs to come to my house and do 3 hours house work to make it up to me.

Or at the very least he needs to fuck off.

(This review is dedicated to the brave men and women of the US postal service.)

Say what you want about Street Fighter The Movie, but it has Raul Julia as M.Bison.

That guy clearly had a lot of fun with the role and he is a lot of fun to watch because of it.

Besides, I'd rather watch that old movie than that shitty new “Legend of Chun-li” movie where they try to pass off some old geezer in a business suit as M.Bison, I mean at least Raul made an effort to actually LOOK like the character. The effects and story were pretty awful too, the bad guy's motive is just to get some property or something. WOW SO EEEEEVIIIIIIILLLLL! Not to mention the reason he became evil is just laughable.

But enough of that.

I've never seen the Postman admittedly, but it sounds pretty bad. My dad actually recommended it for me, along with Waterworld. Waterworld was okay, nothing great but not the trainwreck I was expecting, Dennis Hopper and his bad eye puns were fun to watch, plus it had some cool scenes…but as for The Postman…

Do you think he hates me?

EDIT: Oh yeah, as for the armies-getting-built-up-but-no-payoff-is-delivered method…ever see Hellboy II: The Golden Army? It has a huge army of invincible golden clock creatures that regenerate and are all badass and can serve asses on silver platters easily but then Hellboy just challenges the leader and…the army stops fighting them and lets their leader get his ass kicked…because of some rules or some crap like that, it was pretty lame.

Raul Julia in Street Fighter was not merely a man, he was a shiny golden GOD!

Apparantly he took the role knowing he was dieing and asked his kids what role they wanted him to take.

And he fucking OWNED!

“Bison dollars are worth twenty English pounds. I will force them to accept that exchange rate, once I kidnap their queen.”

If you have a Bison dollar in your pocket, you have a pocket full of dreams!

“For IIII beheld Satan, as he FELLLL from HEAVEEEEN…LIIIIIIKE LIIIIIGHTNIIIIIING!”

So beautiful. :'(

I especially enjoyed when he puts on a smoking jacket along with a different coloured (and presumably more casual) generals hat.

Hark, you are wrong… again.

The postman is an epic tale of hope and is realistically told. Isn't epic enough for ya? well sherlock life ain't epic. It's a human tale with Kc giving a career best performance, even better than in prince of thieves. seriously.

The only thing that couls have improved it would be CGI mutants preying on the postman like the nightstalkers from I am legend, the film that is coz they looked epic.

There is no way the film could have been shorter, in fact i think it should have been a trilogy of 9 hour movies shot back to back.

There is such a rich world, they did a great job expanding on David Brins crappy novel and I think I should make a fancomic…

The postman rules.

I got it, postman pat meets The postman in an epic fight to the death.

What I want to see is a fight between the Holnists from this film and the Smokers from Water World.

Oh who am I kidding?
Lord HUmongous from Mad Max 2 would ride in and kill all of em!

“How much more can a dead postman deliver?”

“You give out hope like it was candy in your pocket.”

“You hear me, postman, I said RIDE!”

These are the lines they put in the trailer.
It is almost like the didn't realise how dreadful this stuff was!

Anyway, I just rewatched the end battle, to make sure I was not being unfair on it.
If anything I made it sound better than it was!
Not only do they wrestle on the ground, in the dust, they do it in freaking slow motion!

This is then followed by another ghastly cliche.
The hero decides to spare the villain, (otherwise he would be just like them.)
So then his young plucky side kick wants to kill the bad guy, but gets talked out of it by Kevin, cause they need to build a better world etc without the bad guys murderous ways etc.
Now thats all pretty stock, but it isn't the REALLY bad bit.
Cause in Hollywood, bad guys can NEVER survive!
We cant send them to jail, force them to live with the fact that all their evil dreams have come to nothing and now they are powerless.
They have to die! Cold bloody vengeance through killing is all we can accept.
So the bad guy manages to grab a gun (naturally pauses before firing like moron bad guys always do) and is then shot by one of his former minions.
And so even the final moral about killing and violence being wrong is undone, because we DID have to kill the guy.
Cause we always do.