The Postman (1997)

Not learning from Waterworld Kevin Costner decided to star in The Postman, released two years later. This time at least its a land based post apocalyptic "thriller", and one with decent conceptual bona fides as its based on whats is actually a pretty good book by David Brin. Brin's book is at heart a novel about the dangers of extremism, and that survives in a watered down form in the movie version, though very little else from the novel does. Like in the book Costner is a lone wanderer in a post apocalyptic America where umpteen years ago society largely collapsed in an unspecified war. With no centralized government what law and order remains is largely administered in a village by village basis, with a group of ideological militarized zealots known as "Hollinists" marauding around and making post industrial life just that much more difficult. In the coarse of his travels the Costner character happens upon a crashed postal truck and takes the dead occupants uniform for warmth, and his sack of mail as reading material. Costner inadvertently hits upon a scheme of passing himself off as a representative of a fictional "Restored United States Congress" out to reestablish postal routs in the pacific north west. He does this, because it means villages will feed him, but it also awakens a long slumbering hope in many people and his tall tale takes on a life of its own, and of course eventually, gains the notice of the Hollinists. The first half of this movie is very slow and blah, the second half is better as the 'postman movment' really starts to take off and Costner finds himself, much to his dismay, to have become a kind of cult figure. It's been a while since I read the book, but there was much more to it, both in form and in substance, while The Postman movie is little more then passable genera fair. *1/2