Postal

Film fans, video game fans, and even Ed Wood fans have heard the name Uwe Boll, perhaps the worst living director out there right now, but certainly one that has a lot of faith in himself. I haven't seen a film by him since 2003 when I subjected myself to the awful zero star film "House of the Dead," which ended up being the worst film of that year, and perhaps one of the worst films ever made. He followed those up with "Alone in the Dark," "Bloodrayne," and lastly "In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tail," which all barely made any money and barely generated any fair reviews let alone good ones. He's angered film fans with his bad movies, and angered video games fans with his bad adaptations. There is even an online petition where he claims if he gets a million names he will stop making movies forever. But seriously, watch some kind of interview with him-he really thinks he is something special, and it is very very funny.

Well, Boll has mixed things up a bit here with "Postal," another video game adaptation, but its a straightforward comedy. An offensive, loud, bloody, and very un-PC comedy, which, I will admit, actually did manage to make me laugh at some points. "Postal" is a bad film, but not nearly as bad as "House of the Dead" in that it is such a trainwreck of a film that some of it actually seems to work in an insanely twisted way. The first scene depicts two terrorists on the plane on September 11th debating on how many virgins they will get in the afterlife, until they just decide to land in the Bahamas, until the passengers end up bringing the plane down into the towers. If that makes you look at the screen in disgust, than this clearly isn't the movie for you. We are then brought to Paradise, a trailer trashed little town where our main characters-billed as Postal Dude-is going to an interview, while his rather rotund and adultery prone wife yells at him. Postal Dude is obviously about to go. . .well, you know where, until he is approached by his cult leader Uncle Dave (played by Dave Foley) to help him rob an amusement park, as both of them are in need of some money. They plan to rob the park of a bunch of dolls, which the Taliban is actually intending on stealing to put vials of some kind of disease to spread around America-a way to spread terrorism without actually killing any of their own. 

You would really have to walk into "Postal" knowing what you are in for-and it really does apporach "so awful that it is tolerable status." Pretty much every aspect of this movie is awful-much of the acting (including a cameo by Verne Troyer as himself) is just awful, although Dave Foley manages to actually turn in something decent here, which is understandable as he just is so naturally funny. The lighting is overly bright, the music is just painful to the ears. But the ridiculous nature of some the jokes are oddly humorous. Even though he is a mass murderer and an awful man, the concept of bin Laden going to self-help meetings to work on issues of anger is oddly amusing. This really is a bad movie, but it is fun to watch, especially in a crowd that laughs when the words "A Uwe Boll Film" come up. 

The reason why I even went to see "Postal,"-the first film of Bolls that I actually gave money too, and this is having a hard time breaking the 5,000 barrier-is because of the story behind it. The film has been pushed back and back and back, and it was going to be set for a wide release last Friday, to go against "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." But at the last minute the 1,500 screen release was reduced to a mere 13, and the only place in all of New York State that you can find "Postal" is the Cobble Hill Cinemas, a small little theatre in Brooklyn that I haven't even been to since 2004. As for Boll, I will say that I did not sign his petition-I just couldn't. First of all, he is doing what he loves to do, and he is such an interesting character to follow that we has already written himself in the history books. We have a man here who appears in the middle of his own movie as himself, makes fun of himself, proclaims to the creator of the "Postal" video game that the movie we are watching is great, and than ends up getting shot in the testicles, and folks want to get RID of him? A character like that? But, unless something generates as much talk or humor as the story of getting "Postal" into theatres did, I think I have seen my last film by him.

Final Grade

** of ****