SUMMER CLEANUP: "I hate video games…" – "Postal" Review

“Postal”
2008
** out of ****
Director: Uwe Boll
Cast: Zack Ward, Dave Foley, Chris Coppola

I took a break from watching old classic movies such as “Wild Strawberries” and “The Shawshank Redemption” for one reason – “Postal.” Out of all of the stocked to the top screeners that I have lying around my house, not one did I want to see more than the newest Uwe Boll creation. In all fairness to the independent directors, though, I was signed up to review “Postal” for over five months now (add seven if you wanted to include when I was set to review it for Geeks of Doom). And I would have reviewed it on the week of “Indiana Jones,” but if it wasn’t for those meddling theater owners and their goddamn money…

But as surprised as I am to say, this Uwe Boll movie isn’t all bad. Sure – it’s still not great, but compared to his other films, “Postal” is fine. I wrote in my review for “In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale” for another site that Boll was learning how to make a decent movie slowly but surely, and “Postal” is just another step. Whereas most of his films prior to “Postal” (wait, ALL of the films) had terrible editing, a stupid script, and bad acting, this has almost none of the above. Still, it is ridden with a few problems that even Helen Keller saw coming.

Here we have an unnamed average Joe, (Zack Ward) who lives in a trailer-park with his overweight cheating wife. When she kicks him out after failing to bring home the welfare check, he has nowhere else to go… other than his Uncle Dave’s place. (Dave Foley) Unfortunately, Uncle Dave doesn’t really have much to run to either. A leader of this bullshit apocalypse cult, Dave is knee-deep in some shit with the IRS, and owes them more than three million dollars. They come up with a plan to get money – steal a bunch of dolls and sell them on E-Bay. Funny thing about those dolls – they sound like Verne Troyer and when you pull it, some Avian Bird Flu comes out of their ass. Oh, and the Taliban wants them too.

“Postal” has become infamous for the opening scene where an airplane crashes into a skyscraper in New York City. When word got out about this event, theater owners made sure that the film didn’t play in their theaters, so much which before the word got out about this little scene, the theater was planned to open in 1500 theaters and take on “Indiana Jones” in the box-office. And while it still did take on Jones and the CGI gophers, it went from 1500 theaters to twelve in the matter of days. Uwe Boll fucked censors, went out and challenged Michael Bay to a PPV fight, and called Eli Roth a hack. How can you not love this guy?

I’m guessing that the answer is easily, because NO ONE likes his movies (or this one, in particular). Sure the scene where an airplane crashes into a skyscraper is controversial, but there is so much in the film that is equally as offensive as that, such as looking at Dave Foley’s cock, watching the real Verne Troyer being raped by thousands of monkeys, and witnessing the true love and friendship among Osama and George W… I’m seriously. The motherfuckers skip through an open field with each other at the end of the movie.

I have to agree with a lot of these critics that the scenes that I listed above just really weren’t that funny. They sound more outrageous when typed out on Microsoft Word than what they really look like while you watched the film at 24 frames a second. In fact, the most outrageous part of the movie is when a bunch of children get shot. I won’t spoil anything as for why they do get shot, because… well… I just don’t fucking know why they got shot. It seems like that they got shot just so Boll can say that he shot about ten kids in a movie and lived to tell about it.

But I’ll admit that there are a few really funny scenes in the film, including one that takes place while Zack Ward’s character goes to pickup his welfare check and a few guns are drawn. There was another scene where Zack Ward comes into contact with a guy asking for a few bucks so he can get on a bus to see his kids that I found simply hilarious. A scene with a black cop who thought a lady called him the n-word made me laugh like it was no tomorrow. All of this and these were all intentional laughs – who woulda thought from an Uwe Boll movie.

While I don’t think talking about the way a cast acts in an Uwe Boll movie really classifies as something positive, I sure think that talking about the way Uwe Boll acts in an Uwe Boll movie really classifies as something negative. Before “Postal” I’ve seen every single Uwe Boll film and the guy never really went out of his way to offend his audience. Sure there were times where his audience was offended because they saw a film that tasted like such shit, but there wasn’t a time when he threw in some random crap and tried to offend the viewer.

In “Postal,” the guy goes OUT of his way to offend you, in ways that if it wasn’t used for comedic purposes, it would make you break down and cry. Nothing can get to a family man more than hearing about ten to fifteen kids getting shot at the same time at the same place for no apparent reason, but Uwe Boll finds it funny. In fact, even the violence is offensive. A terrorist bomber gives J.K. Simmons a hug just so he can blow himself and Simmons up. This really does occur in the movie for no apparent reason other than just to offend a few people. It’s like Uwe Boll is trying to get the point across that all Muslims want to die.

This isn’t satiric, as what Uwe Boll would call it. This is just wrong. And as a man who would do almost anything just so someone can get a good laugh out of it, some of the scenes are just at the lowest common denominator.

“Postal” is Uwe Boll’s second best film, and whereas the editing and direction has improved and the movie isn’t unintentionally funny anymore, one must not be able to forget that some things just aren’t meant to be laughed at, whether if it is funny or unfunny. In this case, “Postal” is a classless act.

ALSO: I guess that I would include this in here since it is on DVD now, but there is a featurette on the “Postal” DVD where Uwe Boll fights a few critics, including the owner of Something Awful and one of the hacks from Ain’t It Cool. This is much more entertaining than the movie itself.