The Sunday Times (London)
February 22, 1998, Sunday
THE POSTMAN. 180 mins, 15
Since Dances With Wolves, Kevin Costner’s reputation has been sinking fast. If Waterworld were a spirited mess, then The Postman is simply a mess.
Set in a post-apocalyptic 2013, the film has Costner playing a mule-riding hero who is shanghaied into the private army of a fascist general (Will Patton). He somehow winds up fighting Patton by forming a renegade postal service that delivers freedom’s message throughout the land. Although the film’s capacious budget allows for some fine set pieces, such as the screening of The Sound of Music against the wall of a stone quarry, for the most part it looks like much money poorly spent. Costner’s hero is a particular failure – he starts out speaking to his ass, but winds up talking out of it. The finale has him leading a ragtag army into battle quoting Henry V while dressed in the uniform of a letter carrier. Imagine Cheers’s Cliff Clavin in Braveheart and you get the dispiriting picture.
