In a movie three hours long, you can cycle through a lot of opinions of the film. It's going to give cynics something to sneer at, yet it will leave the impressionable with hope for the future. Kevin Costner co-produced, starred in and directed his return to the dystopian future of Waterworld . As a result of war, pestilence and a nuclear winter, the United States has become Somalia.
All governance is gone, and life has returned to simpler times of the strong against the weak.
We had earlier met the nameless character played by Costner. He's a drifter, performing pastiches of Shakespeare, his mule as co-star, in exchange for a bit of food and supplies. He is pressed into Gen. Bethlehem's army, escapes and seeks shelter from the cold in an abandoned U.S. Postal Service delivery vehicle, the original operator's skeleton still inside it. He puts on the letter carrier's uniform, puts the leather bag over his shoulder and appears at the next gated community demanding to be allowed inside to discharge his federal duty. He becomes known as The Postman.