Subject: Review: The Postman (1997)

From: James Sanford <[email-masked]>
Date: 29 Dec 1997 05:25:26 GMT

THE POSTMAN
(Warner Brothers)
 The postman doesn't deliver on Christmas Day, and "The Postman," Kevin
Costner's Christmas gift to America, doesn't deliver much in the way of
entertainment, regardless of what day it is. A bloated, overwrought telling
of a simple --and jaw-droppingly corny-- tale, this attempt at a sort of
sci-fi Western duplicates the thre-hour-plus length of Costner's directorial
debut "Dances With Wolves" (1990), without summoning up one iota of the
emotional power of the earlier film.
 Instead, "The Postman" is a textbook study of a director falling in love
with a truly bad idea and desperately struggling to turn it into a playable
movie. But despite giving a passable performance in front of the camera,
Costner is not quite a skilled enough director to elevate "The Postman" to
the epic status it so badly wants to claim.
 Adapted from David Brin's novel and set in 2013, following a second Civil
War, "The Postman" depicts life in an America in which the government has
fallen and a merciless warlord who calls himself General Bethlehem (Will
Patton) roams the land with his "racially pure" troops, terrorizing the
scattered settlements in the West, which seem --judging by the shabby
wardrobes on view-- to be populated exclusively by people who have forgotten
how to sew. When a nameless drifter (Costner) who has escaped Bethlehem's
army pretends to be a postman to get free meals and hospitality on the road,
his masquerade inadvertantly snowballs into a crusade against the General
and his men. The spirit of America is resurrected along with the mail
service, and, when he's not opposing tyranny, The Postman plays post office
with frontier babe Abby (Olivia Williams), who first begs him to impregnate
her and finally falls madly for him.
 If that all sounds more than a bit hokey, wait until you see how it plays
out. Although screenwriters Eric Roth and Brian Helgeland have made
ocassional stabs at trying to inject some humor into the proceedings, "The
Postman" is the most heavy-handed piece of jingoism since director John
Milius' 1984 camp classic "Red Dawn." Again and again Costner offers up
crowds of downtrodden souls who beam and look skyward as The Postman
delivers stirring speeches such as "Times seem tough right now, but suff's
gettin' better"; at one point, a little girl, inspired by this mail-carrying
messiah, bursts into a chorus of "America The Beautiful" and is quickly
joined by the throngs around her.
 Even worse is a scene that shows anxious townsfolk applauding The Postman
as he delivers the mail (no one seems to realize that with the postal
service restored they'll son be receiving 15 years worth of overdue bills)
and a laughably drawn-out vignette in which a little boy hands off a letter
to The Postman as he gallops by on horseback. Director Costner shows a
decided weakness for slow-motion, both in the action sequences and in the
would-be tearjerking portions of the film, and the technique doesn't always
enhance the scene.
 It should also come as no surprise that "The Postman" features a virtual
gallery of Costner close-ups, all elegantly lensed by cinematographer
Stephen Windon, whose camerawork is one of the picture's major strengths:
here's Kevin by moonlight; Kevin through frosted glass; Kevin in mountain
stream. Next to this, Barbra Streisand's "The Mirror Has Two Faces" looks
like the work of a wallflower.
 Obviously Costner believes in this material and wants to share the
qualities he sees in it with the masses. But "The Postman" collapses under
the weight of its own preachiness and ponderousness. Treat it as you would a
rancid fruitcake delivered by mail: Mark it "return to sender" and stay as
far away from it as possible.
James Sanford