The Postman

Plot synopsis:
Despite the post-apocalyptic scenario and several action sequences, the book is largely about civilization and symbols. Each of the three sections deals with a different symbol.
The first is the Postman himself, Gordon Krantz, who takes the uniform solely for warmth after he loses everything but his sleeping clothes. He wanders without establishing himself anywhere and performs scenes from William Shakespeare plays for supplies. Originally a student at the University of Minnesota, he has traveled west to Oregon in the aftermath of the worldwide chaos that resulted from several EMPs, the destruction of major cities, and the release of bioweapons. Taking shelter in a long-abandoned postal van, he finds a sack of mail and takes it to a nearby community to barter for food and shelter. His initial assertions to be a real postman build not because of a deliberate fraud (at least initially) but because people are desperate to believe in him and the Restored United States.
Later, in the second section, he encounters a community, Corvallis, Oregon, which is led by Cyclops, who is apparently a sentient artificial intelligence created at Oregon State University which miraculously survived the cataclysm. In reality, however, the machine ceased functioning during a battle, and a group of scientists maintain the pretense of its working to try to keep hope, order, and knowledge alive.
Eventually, in the third section, as the Postman joins forces with Cyclops's scientists in a war against an influx of "hypersurvivalist militia", the Postman begins to find that the hypersurvivalists are being pressed from Oregon's Rogue River area to the south as well. The hypersurvivalists are more commonly referred to as Holnists, after their founder, Nathan Holn (many times through the book, curses are uttered that damn Holn for his actions). Nathan Holn was an author who championed a virulently violent, misogynistic, and hypersurvivalist society. Holn himself is said to have been executed sometime before the events in the novel, but in the time following what should have been a brief period of civil disorder, Holn's followers prevented the United States from recovering from the war and the plagues that followed.
As the story comes to a climax, the Postman allies with a tough tribal group made up of descendents of ranchers, loggers and Native Americans from Southwestern Oregon's Umpqua Valley region who are led by a Native American who is a special forces veteran. The Umpqua people have developed a warrior culture very similar to Native Americans of the Old West and are bitter enemies of the Holnists; they have defeated the Holnists at every turn but until the Postman's arrival, they were not inclined to help the "weak" townsfolk of the Willamette Valley against the Holnists. At the end of the novel the Postman discovers the Holnists have another organized enemy to the South. The Holnists' southern enemy is a bit of a mystery, and the Postman is able to identify this Holnist enemy only by the symbol they rally behind: the Bear Flag. The final scenes of the novel give the impression that the groups (symbols) may come together in an effort to revive civilization.
Another message of the plot deals with the backstory of the post-apocalyptic world: specifically, that it was not the electronics-destroying EMPs, the destruction of major cities, or the release of various bio-engineered plagues that actually destroyed society, but rather it was the Holnists themselves, who preyed on humanitarian workers and other symbols of civilization.

Tags: boring, murder, cult, violence, humor, alternate history

Review:
When released in 1997 this breathtaking, thought-provoking epic was largely ignored and limped to a box office gross of $14 million, thanks to some vicious reviews.Lest we forget, Costner made the magnificent Dances With Wolves, but that was in the days when we were told it was okay to like him.
Like Michael Cimino, his efforts are belittled and mocked while directors with clearly less talent are applauded.So to all those people who stayed away in droves and screw their faces up at the mention of this film, I say watch it before you criticise it.
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.
"The Postman" is a good solid film about the end of the world and the chaos and confusion that follows with the unwitting soul that destiny choose to bring those who survived the apocalypse back to a better life and promising future.
With the cast of Kevin Costner on down giving the film the sort of believability that you just don't see in most of the "End of he World" movies that have been projected on the silver screen since "Things to Come" back in 1936."The Postman" unlike most "End of the world" movies carries through the entire movie, which is almost three hours long, a positive and uplifting theme that you rarely get to see in these type of films.
The ending of the film, call it corny it you will, was really moving without being obnoxious like it could have been had it been made by a lesser talent then Kevin Costner..
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.
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..
"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.
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 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, decentralizedAmerica 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 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've enjoyed a few of Kevin Costner's movies over the years and respect the many talents he has as an actor, writer, producer and director.
The concept is great, the scenery pretty good (though not particularly outstanding), and it starts off pretty well, but the music is pompous and grating in the extreme, the acting ludicrous, the continuity of the story lumbering, the dialogue pathetic (I have never heard one single word repeated so many times as 'postman' in this flick) and the ending made me want to retch.
It's hard to say which was worse, this or ''Waterworld,'' but I'd have to go with ''The Postman.'' The scene at the end where the man looks at the statue and cries, ''That was me,'' is among the most laughable in movie history.
''Ride, Postman, Ride!'' As for the comment earlier that ''we were told'' not to like Kevin Costner's direction anymore, hard to believe.
By reading the description of the film my wife thought this movie must be nice, so we agreed to give it a try.
Surprisingly Bad. The film looks like a very long US Postal Office advertisement.
Kevin Costner had the dubious distinction of producing the worst film of all time in "Waterworld", but the little scoundrel actually outdid himself with this one.
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 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 just like waterworld he failed.If you like to see a good movie about a lonesome guy wandering in a post apocalyptic desert, go see 'Mad Max the Road Warrior'.Okay, in this one Kevin comes up with a more original story than Waterworld (the story of Waterworld was just stolen from the "Road Warrior").On the other hand, waterworld was still enjoyable as a simple action-adventure movie.
'The postman' however is just boring and pretentious.Kevin Costner may try as hard as he can, he will never be the mean guy and hero-against-his-will-type like Mel-'Mad Max'-Gibson was.The postman is a three hour-long torture of stupid dialogues, bombastic symbolism and self-glorification.I even feel pity for Tom Petty.
Somebody said "I'd like to make a movie based on the idea of how the US Postal Service is a good idea, it just needs restructuring."  Unfortunately, rather than give it to the "TV Movie of the Week" people, they gave it to Kevin Costner."I want this movie to have people in the aisles, screaming GOD BLESS AMERICA", he must have said.
I have to say up front I'm not a big fan of Kevin Costner to begin with so I only picked up the movie because I couldn't find what I was really wanting from the library the other day.
What he *did* eventually make was a three hours overlong (no mistake here), boring, choppy, silly, naive ridiculous soap opera that - this time deservingly - got more trashing than all his previous movies combined.
I still can't see why "Water World" or "Robin Hood" took such beatings in America - they're very popular and liked in Europe, and besides, they're good movies.
But "The Postman" is one of the worst movies ever made, making Ed Wood's work seem like The True Art. It deserves all the bad opinions it gets.
The storyline is horrid; the movie is very, very long (I had to take breaks!) and the acting is at best mediocre.The story has Kevin Costner as the heroic postman, saving the day when restoring the postal system.
When watching the postman my mood changed from at first outrage: "How could anyone make such complete nonsense" to laughter in the end when it became apparent that some stupid Americans would watch this and think what a great country USA is.Costner started out directing with style in Dances with wolves, scraped the bottom with the expensive waterworld and then wrote himself into history with the Postman.
In a post-apocalyptic America, a vagabond (Kevin Costner) finds a dead postal carrier and takes his uniform and bag of letters and manages to con a meal and a place to sleep from a walled town with a letter addressed to one of the town's residents.
This action sets off a chain of events that culminate with The Postman becoming a reluctant hero and helping the townspeople stand up to a heavily armed and organized KKK led by the self-styled "General" Bethlehem.This is a terrible movie and has an interesting twist on the post-apocalyptic frontier America type of sci-fi but Kevin Costner shouldn't have starred in it.
If Kevin Costner can get rich producing drivel like this movie, we all can.
By buying this atrocity on DVD you are telling him "Please, Kevin keep pooping on reels of film" I had always wondered what a mind f**k would be like and now I know, it's the fact that people with your intelligence have lived this long.
Besides the weak story (which vaguely resembles the so-so novel), poor editing, and bad casting (Will Patton!!!???), this film suffers from and reveals a major flaw:  Kevin Costner is not a good enough actor to carry a film.
Not that there's anything wrong with long movies, if length is required by plot and material; but Costner has confused over-long with epic (does the bloated story really merit its treatment?
I used to like Kevin Costner, but after seeing such films as Waterworld, No Way Out, and now this, my opinion of his acting skills is much lower.
About the only expressions Costner makes in this film are to smile and to stare at something.If you are looking to watch a good adventure movie, watch the Lord Of The Rings trilogy or Dances with Wolves etc., but whatever you do, DO NOT WATCH THIS Film!.
It was a long movie, which is a point against it with the popular audience from the start , but can work if you have a lot of story to tell.
Now she doesn't want to watch movies with me anymore, since I made her suffer through "The Postman".I knew that the movie had received bad reviews, but I wanted to form my own opinion anyway (sometime this fall, I'll probably even rent "Spice World").
It was wonderfully acted and it was a really good story.I don't understand why all the reviews made it out to be a terrible movie and it was voted one of the worst movies of all time.
I guess the cinematagrpahy was good, and you can laugh at the plot and dialog, but at 3 hours you can only laugh so long before you turn it off.Its funny, I never really felt the patriotism people mention when they review this film (even if a reviewer is for or against the film), so those that say this makes them feel patriotic, I have no idea what the hell your talking about, I think you just must be a moron from Texas or something to feel all "god bless America" about this stupid boring, bad movie."President Starky"?
Despite it's length (3 hours) i was charmed the whole time.This movie is original and has all the great ingredients of a great epic.It's also interesting to see how the Postman transforms when incidents thrust him to hero status - how can he live up to what people believe him to be ?
I want to buy it on video, but I can't find it for sale in any store (and I don't shop on-line).Of course, as a rule, if I read a bad review in the newspaper, I know I'll like the movie - I haven't figured out where these people come from, or if they even saw the same movie I did!
Thing is, I'm fairly masochistic when it comes to watching bad movies, I love cheesy post-apocalyptic flicks like Mad Max, Hardware, Tank-girl, Steel Dawn, Waterworld (yes!
It seems this is a movie you either love or hate, so my recommendation would be to watch it and make up your own mind.Still, it really is a tedious and utterly boring yawn of a film..
Even I was getting a little tired of Kevin Costner after "Waterworld", but "The Postman" was a great movie!
If memory serves, the cause of the apocalypse is not made clear, it is not important, but whatever the event was, the impact of it was worsened with severe droughts and food shortage.The baddies are the Holnists (named after their dead founder Nathan Holn) - an army led by Will Patton's excellently played character, General Bethlehem, a terrifyingly cruel man that has no mercy and was never in the army before the apocalypse (look out for the reveal of his job before the apocalypse is one of many lighthearted moments in the film).The goodies are led by Kevin Costner's never-named accidental hero, a self appointed postman, "The Postman".One of my favourite films.
It does get a little sentimental at times but most of Costner's movies do.
I don't know what Costner's deal is with making long movies.
After escaping an army and pretending to be a postman, Kevin Costner sets out to rebuild America.The only bad thing I can say about this film is that some of the actors were really poor.
Certain plot holes exist if you pay attention (I noticed for example that everyone knows the president is in Minneapolis, although the only time Costner said this was in private to the enemy) but the overall premise of rebuilding through the use of communication is somewhat realistic and a very intriguing idea if nothing else.The woman playing Abby was great, maybe even greater than she was in "Rushmore" (though that film reigns supreme).
OK, there may be a little bad acting from secondary characters yet it is hidden in the midst of a lot of Good acting and some people may think fifteen year-old letters delivered by this postman cannot be that mighty in doing all this change that the story expresses but I may have a little bit of a difference in opinion cause I believe that hope can be born with the slightest you do to create it as long as the person in who's heart this hope is born is willing to have such hope.Now in a world where everything of value is fading away, people would be willing for the slightest ray of hope, now the fifteen years old letters viewers of the movie criticized as being an overstatement of a power giver is actually considered by myself a great ray of hope.To make this short all I would want to say is, if you wanna watch a great movie called the postman, Then watch one that stars Kevin Costner and Olivia Williams cause if this movie isn't that perfect then at least all I know is it sends the viewer two important messages which are it is never too late to change everything that is wrong around him and it is a human's belief that he is weaker than another is what makes him actually weak........
Perhaps this is because I have always loved Kevin Costner's style of making movies.
To see the character grow into his role as the leader of a movement, even down to taking extraordinary risks to protect them from danger, was inspirational and moving.I know the movie didn't receive great reviews when it came out, and neither did Costner's Waterworld.
Instead Costner has created a sort of wild west world that is fresh and interesting to watch.So if you like PA movies, don't miss this one!Ps. This film reminded me very much of a brilliant post-apocalyptic book that everyone who loves this genre MUST read : Lucifers Hammer..
Costner came through again with another great movie, making this film the "Dances With Wolves" of science fiction films.
Another post-apocalypse film, this time with Kevin Costner starring as a drifter turned hero..
As The Postman, Kevin Costner brings hope, faith, and joy to the people he delivers the mail to.
Continuing my plan to watch every Kevin Costner movie in order, I come to The Postman from 1997.Plot In A Paragraph: Whilst living in post-apocalyptic America, a nameless drifter (KC) dons a postman's uniform, and armed with a bag of mail sets out to con his way into various communities, for free food and shelter.
The knives were well and truly out for this film and its star Kevin Costner.
This film could have been much shorter, because it's basically just a story of a good guy who stands up against a bad guy in a post-apocalyptic setting.
And, I suppose, a story about how one person at the right time and place can inspire change that affects thousands or even millions of others.I've heard critics say that the movie plays as cheesy or maybe that it plays to Costner's ego or something.
I suppose the problem is that it came out after Waterworld, and that movie was so bad nobody want to risk money on another Costner post-apocalypse movie.
The movie's general insight into men's (and women's) conflicting motivations is quite good.I found the first 2 hours spotless and exhilarating, even if the insemination scene ruled out the possibility of my kids watching the whole film.
So, the postman movement was over-emphasized (although Ford Lincoln Mercury was great) and the postman himself was too ambivalent about it.I think of this as one of Costner's concept movies, like Field of Dreams and Dances with Wolves.