Review: Postal

Postal is the latest film by infamous German director Uwe Boll. I caught a screening of the film recently with Boll in attendance but was unfortunately unable to stay after for the Q&A session. He did introduce the movie however and spent a few minutes explaining his intentions for making it, which were mildly interesting.

Boll is probably the most critically lambasted director of our time, a fact that has garnered him as much positive press as negative. I can’t help but think that if his movies were reviewed just a little bit better, nobody would take notice and he’d be lost in the large sea of average movies made every year. If you’re wondering what I mean by “critically lambasted”, here are some examples courtesy of Rotten Tomatoes: Alone in the Dark – 1%, Bloodrayne – 4%, House of the Dead – 4%. That about sums it up I think.

But what did I think of Postal? Well, let’s just say we’ll soon be able to add it to the coveted list of movies with RT ratings of under 10%. Despite some inconceivably favourable early reviews, Postal is bad, plain and simple. The acting is cartoon-y, the story is dumb, and frankly it’s just not funny. The plot revolves around a shipment of penis-shaped dolls coming into the United States that contain a strain of the Avian Bird Flu. We follow our main hero, “dude”, and his band of friends/hot chicks as they try to acquire the shipment so they can resell the dolls. They cross paths with the Taliban, who want the dolls so they can unleash the bird flu on America. Remember when I said the story was dumb? I wasn’t kidding.

I don’t mind giving props where they’re due however, and there were a couple of scenes that had me laughing – most notably the opening sequence. It involves two of the September 11 terrorists in the cockpit of one of the planes discussing how many virgins are coming to them in the afterlife. Put aside all your “it’s too soon” thoughts, and this scene will have you laughing out loud. Another highlight is a scene where a fight breaks out in a welfare office that effectively satirizes the state of social programs in North America.

Sadly, the rest of the movie doesn’t work. Not only is it not funny but I found myself bored and waiting for it to end most of the time. Here’s a movie that’s supposed to be about a guy with a crappy life who one day snaps and goes on a rampage (“Postal”, if you will), but we get bogged down in silly sub-plots and lame jokes. I wanted big action with lots of killing, stuff blowing up, and shit covered fans. There was only one big shoot-out near the end which wasn’t even that good, and by then I just didn’t care.

Boll’s intention was to satirize the current state of American foreign policy and their involvement in the Iraq war. One of the keys to good satire is to take realistic events and present them in a silly or otherwise uncommon way, with humorous intentions. The two funny scenes I mention above do this very well, and I wish the rest of the movie followed.

I can’t say if Postal is better or worse than any other Boll movies, because I haven’t seen them. But it doesn’t really matter anyway because Postal doesn’t stand on it’s own. After such a funny and inspired piece of comedy to open the film, it’s really too bad that the rest of it fell flat.

On the Zombie scale, Postal gets a Zombie Incident.