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.