Continuing my plan to watch every Kevin Costner movie in order, I come to The Postman from 1997.Plot In A Paragraph: Whilst living in post-apocalyptic America, a nameless drifter (KC) dons a postman's uniform, and armed with a bag of mail sets out to con his way into various communities, for free food and shelter. As he does this, he accidentally begins to inspire hope to others. Any goodwill KC earned with Tin Cup was well and truly gone, by the time this movie was released. Mocked as a vanity project during its production, and greeted to savage reviews, including being labelled "Dances With Myself" The Postman never stood a chance, as critics and and the press had a field day, and the public listened to them staying away in droves. Is it perfect?? Far from it. For starters I think it could use some trimming here and there. Maybe if it was an hour shorter it would not have been so savagely reviewed and may have found more of an audience. Because for this reviewer all of the performances are good, it's well directed and has a good score. But sadly, I'd reviewers say stay away, the public behave like sheep and generally listen. I think some people who bash this movie have not actually seen it.

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.

**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!

As a whole I love this film. The premise of the story was probably the best thing about the film. I would certainly like to read the book if there is one. This movie could have been improved with better editing and changes to the dialogue. There is a bit of exposition here and there that rankled with me a tiny bit. A few of the minor characters gave some unconvincing performances but on the whole the acting was decent enough. It was certainly the editing that let the film down. Realistically it probably could have done with being longer since certain stages of the story seemed rushed. I would love to see this as a series. The soundtrack is very well orchestrated and in places contributed massively to the emotional build ups. The main musical theme was almost identical to the one from 'The Castaway' and there are also similarities in some of the symbolism (Obviously this film came first). Some of the costuming at the very end was a bit strange. I certainly recommend this film! It really is quite engrossing, one of those ones that really capture the imagination on a rainy night!