BroadcastChic Excellent, a Must See

DipitySkillful an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

djfrost-46786 I would watch this movie again over Die Hard 2 or Die Hard 3. I don't get why this movie is so low in ratings n the Die hards are so high. This movie has alot of emotion with action. At some points it reminds u of I Am Legend.

Leofwine_draca Kevin Costner's second post-apocalypse movie in the same number of years after WATERWORLD is a real yawner of a film, simply because the limited story does not fill three hours of screen time. An hour and a half and this might have made a decent movie, but at three hours the pacing is a crawl and the film difficult to sit through without losing interest. As an adventure, it's also seriously lacking in the kind of action these films require, and the minimal battles and fights that do exist are rather mundanely portrayed and uninteresting. Instead, it appears that Costner is interested in the moralising, the sentimentality, and the occasionally pretentious storyline about an everyday drifter who pretends to be a postman and invents a story of a new government in order to bring hope to the post-holocaust masses.It has to be said that the story is original and interesting (a rarity these days), but the endless padding and cheesy romance between Costner and Olivia Williams seriously drags things down. Costner is adequate in the role as the hero but seems unsure of himself at times, just giving vague expressions instead of acting when he has to. Instead of the clear-cut heroic roles of his past, instead he's portrayed as a pacifist and occasional coward who only fights after being hunted down by the enemy. His thunder is somewhat stolen by the superb and underrated Will Patton as the bad guy, General Bethlehem, who gives an in-depth and multi-layered performance as the intelligent villain and has a great screen presence - it's a shame this man doesn't get leading roles. Larenz Tate is also good as the young patriot, but Olivia Williams and her corny romance belongs in another film. The supporting cast is littered with the familiar faces of James Russo, Daniel von Bargen, Tom Petty, Giovanni Ribisi, and Joe Santos, but nobody gets a look in much and the only developed characters are Costner, Tate, Williams, and Patton.Without a doubt, THE POSTMAN has some great cinematography in places, especially in the sweeping vistas and magnificent landscapes it often uses as a backdrop. Yet the special effects are kept to a bare minimum, thus alienating the young thrill-seeking crowd, and after the blood-and-thunder of the likes of Mel Gibson's BRAVEHEART, audiences weren't expecting this off beat, slow-paced and preachy epic. I didn't hate it as much as some, but I did find it hard to keep up the energy of watching it in places. Probably the best aspect of the story is its originality, but this frequently means taking the tale into unsatisfying areas. Not a total failure, but that running time is a real killer for this kind of story.

clark-157 Box-office busts intrigue me. I often find myself enjoying them, despite their poor critical reception. This was a fairly major box-office bust, but as with any film, I would suggest seeing it for yourself to see if you like it or not. This is easy to do on Netflix; if you're not into it, you can just stop it and try something else.The problems I found were the length — at almost 3 hours long, it was SLOW, at least much of the time… 80-90 minutes would have been plenty, and would have made this a much tighter film — it's corny and unimaginative; no real subtlety here, too much predictability; Kevin Costner is in just about every scene, and, presumably because he was also the director, so there was no one to rein him in; the music was boring, cliché, and unimaginative, very much like the movie.And yet, I made it through to the film's conclusion, probably because I'm stubborn and wanted to see how it would end, and also because the basic premise is unusual — a dude's decision to impersonate a postman in a dystopian world somehow leads to redemption for a great many people. This in itself is rather ridiculous, but I was willing to suspend my disbelief and look past this, which I guess is something to be said in the film's favour.

tiankem **Spoiler alert (barely)** What the hell were the critics smoking with the terrible reviews about this movie! This movie was made in 1997 yet the undeserved criticism still unnerves me. The Postman is arguably the best post-apocalyptic movie ever made! I love the way that this movie keeps a post-world-war setting realistic, small and with communal ties. It correctly portrays a realistic lack of communication due to an unnamed catastrophe (probably an EMP and/or Nuke). The story is especially interesting because of the way the Postman literally stumbles into his role due to a desire to survive but then passionately becomes the lie he is portraying only after a woman kicks his butt into gear (isn't that what usually happens in life?). Kevin Costner does an outstanding job, as does Olivia Williams and especially Will Patton. Got to love the cameo by Tom Petty! I read Brin's book and it starts out very well but then moves from a realistic and thrilling post-apocalyptic survival story to a wasteland of fantastic tech story tangents. The movie on the other hand is adapted very well for the big screen and keeps the plot on task, despite the 3 hour time frame (I had no problem with this in this movie). Strange how the book was award-winning yet the movie got so much criticism; that's backwards if you ask me. This movie is about HOPE. Those critics that thought certain scenes were "cheesy" or that "it was the worst movie of the year" are the same critics that continually keep the minions on track toward the brainless, plot less movies that have a serious lack of character development...but hey, they have GREAT special effects and action! They are the same critics that laugh at the very notion of HOPE in movies. HOPE is something our world needs more of and it was the powerful and critical ingredient that sparked a revolution in The Postman. I loved this movie! I rarely watch movies more than once or twice yet I own this movie and have watched it countless times. I am a huge fan of the post-apocalyptic genre and this movie is easily in my top 5 of that genre! I find it interesting that over 52,000 "non-critics" have voted about this movie on this website, and the highest number of votes came in at 7 out of 10 (10,630 votes); hardly "the worst movie of the year". Thank you Kevin for choosing to make The Postman over other choices you had at the time. Those of us "non-critics" appreciate it!