Before watching
Postal, the latest video-game adaptation (and first
“English-language comedy”) from widely-detested German filmmaker
Uwe Boll, I shunned all efforts made to illegitimate Boll’s
career. The fact that said efforts stemmed merely from
resentment towards the lack of artistic competence displayed by
Boll’s works struck me as entirely excessive. When friends tried
to get me to sign an online petition that seeks to stop Boll
from making more movies, I refrained from doing so. After all,
as far as I could tell, the guy had every right to write and
direct bad films. To try to force him to stop would be a
violation of the principles of free-speech set forth by our
Constitution’s First Amendment, right? As long as Boll could
raise the funds to keep making pictures—a remarkable feat given
how many box-office failures his career has suffered—then I
reckoned that he had a valid prerogative to stick with it.
However, since
fatefully walking into a Beverly Hills screening room on a
recent Wednesday evening and then enduring Boll’s latest film, I
have revised my opinion on the man and his filmic intentions.
Postal is not merely a bad motion picture; it transcends
such a label. The movie is—quite possibly—the worst film that I
have ever seen in my life, the most offensive piece of garbage
that I have ever laid my precious eyes on. I say this without
any preconceived biases against Boll; in fact, I was quick to
point out that his In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege
Tale represented a huge improvement on his previous features
when it was released last January, contrary to what many critics
were claiming at the time. I viewed every minute of Postal
with a clear and open mind and, unfortunately for Boll, that
made the exercise seem all the more detestable and insufferable.
How any sane human could tolerate the picture is beyond me.
But enough with
the mindless insults of the film. Boll, a frequent reader of all
of his harshest critics, would likely challenge me to a boxing
match (as he has done in the past with a few of my Internet
cohorts) if I were to write anything negative about he or his
film without backing it up. And given the fact that his boxing
skills have been proven to be quite good against us critics,
it’s best that I avoid such a duel, hesitant as I am about
wasting precious words on such an undeserving movie.
Postal’s
plot revolves around an American twentysomething known only as
Dude (Zack Ward). Dude lives in the ironically-named city of
Paradise (Get it? Har-de-har-har!), a white-trash Mecca full of
trailer-homes similar to the one occupied by he and his morbidly
obese, cheating wife. After experiencing little luck in an
ongoing job-search, Dude hits rock bottom and decides to take up
work for his corrupt uncle Dave (Dave Foley), who runs a cultish
hippie-commune in an estate that he has built using
questionably-obtained funds. With the IRS pursuing him for
unpaid back-taxes, Dave employs Dude in a scheme involving the
robbery of a shipment of several hundred vulgar “Krotchy” dolls,
hot items that he plans to sell on eBay to make enough cash to
pay off the debt. The only problem: the dolls are being used by
Osama bin Laden as concealed-containers for vials of bird-flu
intended to be unleashed upon an unknowing American Public. As
one would expect of such lunacy, the affair erupts in chaos by
the time the climax kicks in.
The press
materials for Postal liken the movie to Borat in
that it represents a satire that showcases modern stereotypes in
order to form a running political commentary. Nowhere do said
materials mention the pertinent fact that Sacha Baron Cohen’s
film engaged in such a practice as a means to ultimately
deconstruct the prejudices and bigotries expressed by its
participants, unlike Postal, which creates and embraces
them. The movie functions as one big “F-You” to Americans, with
Boll depicting the country’s entire citizenry as members of one
of two equally-repulsive groups: idiot redneck or deluded
progressive. Extreme liberals and moral-relativists may attempt
to claim that Boll is working to form a larger statement on the
dangerous nature of American free-enterprise in general, but
doing such gives him too much credit. It takes only a lick of
common sense to realize that Postal is only concerned
with surface-values. In fact, Boll himself even makes a cameo in
one scene, as if to stamp his own personal signature onto the
material and spit directly in his viewers’ faces.
And did I
mention that the movie features a story-thread that suggests
that George W. Bush and bin Laden have been working together in
executing the Iraq War? Or that its opening scene is a parody
of the 9/11 attacks? Oh yes – it goes there. In fact, the
movie even pushes the envelope as far as to include the image of
Dubya and Osama holding hands and skipping into a
mushroom-cloud-filled sunset in its final shot. Indeed,
Postal may prove to be too silly to get overly worked up
about. But to passively dismiss the picture allots Boll more
respect as an artist than he deserves. Thankfully, most theatre
chains have boycotted Postal, thereby prohibiting it from
receiving the wide U.S. release that its studio had hoped it
would be allowed. One thing’s for sure: it is a film that no
hardworking American deserves to be fooled into wasting his or
her money on by a manipulative, egotistical, godawful
filmmaker and his insane financers. And you know what? I think I
will now be signing the aforementioned anti-Boll petition after
all.
-Danny Baldwin,
Bucket Reviews
Review Published
on: 5.20.2008
Screened on:
5.7.2008 at the Wilshire Screening Room in Beverly Hills, CA.
Postal is rated R and runs 99 minutes..
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