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| Star/co-producer/director Kevin Costner walks around with a mule in a barren landscape under a desecrated US flag on this poster for his The Postman |
In a post-apocalyptic future in the year 2013, America has collapsed, but a nomad in a postman's uniform that he has found is going to lead a rebellion against the tyrannical new leader!
The Postman is written by Brian Helgeland (A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988)) and Eric Roth (Forrest Gump (1994)), adapting the same-titled 1985 novel by David Brin (Kiln People (2002)), and directed by co-producer/director/star Kevin Costner (Dances with Wolves (1990)).
It is incredible that Costner was given the huge budget for this even more unfathomable script after the then recent disaster of the Costner-starring action-adventure Waterworld (1995), which is a much better movie. Here he mourns his donkey, as said donkey gets boiled into a stew, and he keeps quoting Shakespeare to Will Patton's (Minari (2020)) irate General Bethlehem, when the general isn't decapitating unfortunate ones. Why the world has come to a place where it consists of a relatively small group of people in a gravel pit who yell for The Sound of Music, which is what we meet in The Postman, we never get an explanation. Nor do we get enlightened when it comes to the involuntarily comical, mysterious relationship with delivering the mail and being a postman, which Costner revels in here. The dialog about this point should be taken down as among the daftest in cinema history.
The score (by James Newton Howard (Pain Hustlers (2023))) indicates knee-high adventure, and the photography (by Stephen F. Windom (Needle (2010))) is grand and good-looking, - but the story around these elements is utter rubbish. The Postman is endlessly awful.
Related posts:
Kevin Costner: Molly's Game (2017) - Chastain is luminous in Sorkin's great true-crime debut (co-star)
Man of Steel (2013) or, Superman v Zod: Sunset of Destruction (co-star)
2003 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
Open Range (2003) - Costner impresses with fabulous classic western
Thirteen Days (2000) - Electrifying Cuban Missile Crisis thriller (actor/producer)
Dances with Wolves (1990) - Costner's triumphant, simpatico western
Watch a 1-minute clip from the film here
Cost: 80 mil. $
Box office: 20.8 mil. $
= Mega-flop (returned 0.26 times its cost)
[The Postman premiered 12 December (California) and runs 177 minutes. Shooting took place from March - July 1997 in Oregon and Washington. Reportedly Costner refused to cut down the film's length at the studio's insistence, following two "disastrous" test screenings. The film opened #9 to a 5.2 mil. $ first weekend in North America, its highest rank there, where it grossed 17.6 mil. $ (84.6 % of the total gross). Roger Ebert gave the film a 1.5/4 star review, equal in rating to this one. Costner returned with Open Range (2003) as a filmmaker and in Message in a Bottle (1999) as an actor. The Postman is rotten at 10 % with a 4.20/10 average rating at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of The Postman?
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