when i first heard that kevin costner was making a movie called " the postman , " i thought , " an american version of 'il postino ? ' 
starring costner ? 
god help us ! " 
when i found out that it was not a remake of " postino " but an postapocalyptic epic , i thought , " 'landworld ? ' 
please , god , make him stop ! " 
as it turns out , " the postman " is a much better film than i had expected . 
despite being set in 2013 , the movie is , at heart , a western : a band of thugs terrorizes peaceful villagers ; a wandering hero opposes the bandits and inspires others to fight back . 
the setting , however , allows that familiar plot to take on greater significance : american society has collapsed due to plagues and wars , and survivors live behind barracades in isolated villages . 
the struggle of a dead society to be reborn has a grand quality and deserves the epic scale costner grants it . 
costner's nameless character , a wandering actor , rides in from the vast wasteland and is soon shanghaied into the service of general bethlehem ( will patton ) , a former copy-machine salesman turned bandit king . 
our hero escapes and discovers the body of a dead postman . 
taking the uniform and bag of mail , he passes himself off as a representative of " the restored united states . " 
he is shocked at the hope that he inspires in the people he meets . 
one young disciple , ford lincoln mercury ( larenz tate ) , organizes a full-scale postal service . 
ford spreads the postman's message of hope until bethlehem finds that the once-meek villagers are beginning to resist his rule . 
as war breaks out between bethlehem's army and the postal workers , costner's character steps into the legend he created and goes from self-centered loner to leader of the revolution . 
his lie of the restored united states becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy . 
 " postman " is an odd blend of a bleak setting and a message of wide-eyed optimism ( sort of " sergio leone meets frank capra " ) , but its treatment of hope and renewal is compelling . 
what could have been another knock-off of " the road warrior " ( like " waterworld " was ) surprises the viewer with a sensitively told story of nobility emerging from rubble . 
tate is the stand-out in the movie's large cast . 
ford lincoln mercury ( self-named ) is the polar opposite of o-dog , tate's character in his debut film , " menace ii society " ( 1993 ) , and tate makes ford's innocent belief in hope as convincing as o-dog's cynicism and brutality . 
his performance sells the movie . 
interestingly , as tate moves from his usual street-smart roles to youthful optimism , the soft-eyed patton , who usually plays nice guys , proves a disarming villain . 
olivia williams makes her film debut as the postman's love interest , abby . 
when they first meet , abby asks him to father her child because her husband is sterile . 
predictably , the husband is soon eliminated by the bandits , and abby is thrown back into the company of the hero . 
however , their relationship develops slowly as the emotional conflicts of both characters are explored ( she , torn by grief , guilt , and anger ; he , resisting his destiny ) . 
 " the postman " is costner's best work thus far . 
perhaps that alone gives us hope for the future . 
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