The Postman (1997)

Director: Kevin Costner

Writers: David Brin, Eric Roth, Brian Helgeland

Composer: James Newton Howard

Starring: Kevin Costner, Will Patton, Larenz Tate, Olivia Williams, Rames Russo, Daniel von Bargen, Tom Petty, Scott Bairstow, Giovanni Ribisi, Roberta Maxwell, Joe Santos, Ron McLarty, Peggy Lipton

More info: IMDb

Tagline: The year is 2013. One man walked in off the horizon and hope came with him.

Plot: A drifter with no name finds a Jeep with the skeleton of a postman and a bag of mail and dons the postman's uniform and bag of mail as he begins a quest to inspire hope to the survivors living in the post apocalyptic America.

My rating: 7/10

Will I watch it again? No.

I've heard nothing but bad things about this picture since it came out.  It's not that bad.  Having just seen it for the first time, the only negative thing I've got to say about it is that it's probably twenty minutes too long but the film doesn't drag that much and it didn't feel like a three hour movie.  I like Costner's character. He felt more like a regular dude whose deceit set him on an unexpected path.  We don't get much in the way of a back story for him, the war or anything else and I liked that.  I dug the ending, surprisingly, with the one on one fight between The Postman and General Bethlehem.  It's predictable but it wasn't all that bad.  The Pacific Northwest scenery is gorgeous.  I would love to live there.  There's probably a 2 hour movie hiding in there somewhere but I think, despite the lag around the two thirds mark, it works pretty well.  The slow evolution of The Postman worked.