Kevin Costner Accidentally Starts Civil War And Steals Your Wife In R-Rated, Post-Apocalyptic Hero’s Journey

By Robert Scucci
| Published 6 seconds ago

I have so many things to say about 1997’s The Postman that I don’t even know where to start. The first thing I’ll say is that Kevin Costner has proven himself to be a reliable leading man. Field of Dreams (1989) and Dances with Wolves (1990) made waves on the big screen, and Yellowstone was never the same after he parted ways with Tyler Sheridan to focus on his sprawling Western vanity project, Horizon: An American Saga. What I’ve noticed about Kevin Costner, though, is that he has a serious hero complex and never seems particularly interested in being part of an ensemble.

You can trace this mindset all the way back to 1995’s Waterworld, which is basically Mad Max with boats. The film was considered a flop upon release because of its bloated budget and disappointing box office returns, but audiences have warmed up to it over the years thanks to a campy charm that’s hard to replicate.

The Postman is an entirely different beast because Costner serves as both director and star. He’s not just an actor following somebody else’s vision, and he’s so committed to building out his own character’s mythology that he might as well be Steven Seagal. Oh, and it’s almost three hours long, which is worth mentioning because money comes and goes, relationships change, but time is the one thing you never get back.

177 Minutes Of Kevin Costner Thinking He’s Awesome

Set in the then-future year of 2013, The Postman follows a drifter played by Kevin Costner. He travels from community to community reciting Shakespeare in exchange for three hots and a cot. He barely knows any Shakespeare, but it’s enough to impress General Bethlehem (Will Patton), the leader of a militia group known as the Holnists, who captures him and attempts to indoctrinate him.

No joke, when it’s time for Kevin Costner to match wits with Bethlehem, he says, “To be or not to be…” and this is apparently enough for the man to think he’s an intellectual and a scholar that deserves his respect, so long as he doesn’t step out of line. Anyhow, Costner escapes and seeks refuge in an abandoned mail truck, burning letters one by one for light and warmth while hiding from Bethlehem and his loyal army. Suddenly, he has a great idea: he’ll dress like a postman, show up at the nearest settlement, and use his new disguise to score food, drink, and a place to sleep.

He stumbles upon a small town called Pineview, and his plan works even better than expected. So well, in fact, that his mere presence threatens Pineview Sheriff Briscoe (Daniel von Bargen), who knows he’s just a drifter running game but can’t definitively prove it. During his stay, Kevin Costner, who’s super awesome, is approached by Abby (Olivia Williams), who wastes no time asking him to get her pregnant. Abby’s husband, Michael (Charles Esten), is sterile and has absolutely no qualms about Kevin Costner bumping uglies with his wife so they can finally have a baby.

After promising everybody in Pineview that he’s totally legitimate, definitely not a fraud, and committed to delivering mail to and from their community, Kevin Costner, who I now feel comfortable calling “The Postman,” has a run-in with one of the local youths, a young man who calls himself Ford Lincoln Mercury (Larenz Tate) and wants in on that sweet mail-delivery action. With no official authority whatsoever because he doesn’t actually have any, The Postman recruits Ford Lincoln Mercury, and the two basically cosplay as mailmen for the rest of the movie.

When Your Plan Backfires

The previous section may seem like I gave the whole movie away, but I need to remind you that this abomination is three hours long, and we’re barely through the first act. For the sake of brevity, I’ll speed things up and get to the true conflict in The Postman: General Bethlehem. I literally forgot about General Bethlehem after what I’d consider an egregious amount of worldbuilding for a movie about a guy who wants to work for the post office. When he showed up again, my immediate reaction was, “Oh yeah, that guy.”

Despite being such a scholar, General Bethlehem somehow doesn’t realize that Kevin Costner dressed up as a mailman is the same Kevin Costner who impressed him with his flaccid, first-grade rendition of Shakespeare earlier in the film. Unwittingly, and perhaps unwillingly, this whole plot escalates into a full-blown civil war because the Holnists want to maintain their power, and Bethlehem becomes convinced that the American government is slowly reclaiming its former glory because the Postal Service is allegedly operational again.

That’s right. In his mind, mail being delivered by horseback from Oregon to New York over the course of several months means his dynasty is about to crumble.

Along the way, The Postman and Abby fulfill her husband’s wishes, and she gets pregnant. He eventually leaves Pineview but is attacked by Bethlehem’s men, leaving him gravely injured. Abby finds him, and the two seek shelter in a small cabin while he recovers, making sure to make fun of her cooking every time he has enough strength to do so. Abby nearly drowns in an icy river, and The Postman saves her. She burns down the cabin so he’ll be forced to continue his work because that’s what she considers smart. Mail gets delivered, word spreads about the “Restored U.S. Government,” and Bethlehem becomes increasingly enraged as war draws closer.

The Best Unintentional Comedy Of The 90s

As ridiculous as all of this sounds, and it is, I spent most of my time watching The Postman laughing my ass off. The most obvious reason is that everybody plays it completely straight, and James Newton Howard’s score is so whimsical and triumphant. This is, at its core, a story about a mailman. He reminisces about Tang and astronauts before telling Abby that she’s weird or that her face is pretty. Meanwhile, the string section has a glorious crescendo that you’d hear in a Lord of the Rings movie before an epic battle.

Even funnier is the entire hero’s journey that The Postman finds himself on. He literally puts on a dead mailman’s clothes and wanders into town looking to lay low before eventually trying the same scam somewhere else. Within days, he’s leading a resistance movement against General Bethlehem’s sprawling army while trying to restore the long-lost sanctity of American sovereignty. They fight on horseback. Molotov cocktails get thrown through post office windows. Tom Petty shows up for a minute, and I still don’t know why. Kevin Costner rides a zipline.

It’s hilarious because this guy just wanted to keep drifting from town to town, collecting free beans and hardtack wherever he could find them. But his little scheme works so well that he somehow becomes the most important man in post-apocalyptic history. That’s like me trying to fraudulently reuse a BOGO coupon for bulk paper towels at Kroger and somehow ending up as President. I can’t adequately articulate how stupid this all is.

Listen, I’m not telling you to stop what you’re doing and watch The Postman. It’s not currently included with any major streaming subscription. But if you have four dollars you’re willing to part ways with, you can rent this beautiful disaster on-demand through Apple TV+, YouTube, or Fandango at Home.