Postal (2008)
Review by Jeffery J. Timbrell
Thanks to Postal I am now positive that Uwe Boll is brilliant; just not a brilliant filmmaker.
The real genius of Postal wasn’t in the film at all; it was in Uwe Boll’s advertising campaign. Leading up to the release of his latest movie infamous director Uwe Boll unleashed a reign of terror on the online community that may go down in history alongside The Tingler as one of the most outrageous promotional ideas in cinema. Boll has done everything except biting the heads off of live chickens to promote Postal; including calling out Transformers director Michael Bay for a fight at Mandalay Bay, insulting Hostel director Eli Roth as well as Stephen Spielberg and actor George Clooney. Boll even declared that he would retire from filmmaking if over a million fans signed an online petition protesting his work.
Over two hundred thousand people signed the petition to ban the Boll; which garnered mainstream media coverage from all over the world.
Think about that folks; Uwe Boll managed to organize over two hundred thousand of his biggest online detractors into a massive grassroots advertising campaign to promote his latest movie. Even more outrageous, Uwe Boll managed to convince a score of his harshest critics, some of whom had never fought a day in their lives, to get in the ring for a boxing match with Boll, who just so happens to be a PROFESSIONAL FIGHTER.
So lets recap; Uwe Boll got the people who hate his guts to kick up enough stink to attract mainstream media attention for his movie and he managed to convince his critics to step in the ring and let him punch them out, LEGALLY.
That’s some Marvel Supervillain/Keyser Soze insanity going on right there; even if Uwe Boll never makes a decent movie, he has insured that his name will go down in cinema infamy.
Touché, Dr. Boll.
Touché.
Postal opens with two terrorist Arabs arguing in an airplane cockpit over how many virgins they get in the afterlife for martyring themselves. After a few minutes they decide to call up Osama bin Laden to get the answer to their question; only to learn that the number is considerably lower then what they thought. Disgruntled over their lack of inter-dimensional poontang, the two terrorists decide not to martyr themselves and fly to the Bahamas instead. At this point a group of angry American passengers rush into the cockpit trying to take the controls away, which veers the plane off course and directly into the World Trade Center.
Did I mention that this film’s distribution in North America got cut down to a few theaters due to the controversial nature of the film’s content? Go figure.
The plot (like it matters) for Postal involves obese trailer park trash, the heroes planning to steal hyper-expensive sex dolls to sell on Ebay, Osama Bin Laden and his terrorist legions (who have their own plans for those sex dolls), Uwe Boll making a guest appearance as “Uwe Boll” a lederhosen-wearing German director at a Holocaust-lampooning theme park who funds his movies using Nazi Gold (“Hey, somebody had to spend the money!”) and of course President George W Bush, seen playing with toys in his office, crashing a model airplane into two towers of Lego.
Postal is so trashy it makes Paris Hilton look like Audrey Hepburn; its like everybody on set was doing a head-stand in a mountain of coke. I’ve only seen one movie sleazier than this one, and that’s the 1981 surreal fiesta of full frontal nudity, kickboxers and castration Mad Foxes (1981); where you almost feel let down that the DVD didn’t come complete with a used crack-head’s needle and a broken condom. Postal isn’t in bad taste, its bad taste personified, seasoned in garbage and spiced with unbridled insensitivity and arrogance. A review for the film is almost superfluous at this point, if you know anything about it, either you’re going to see it or you’re planning to hunt down Boll on the street to use his head as a hockey puck.
The only person really going Postal in this movie is the abominable Dr. Boll, who isn’t just burning bridges but nuking them from orbit with rockets made out of newborn babies. Boll’s all or nothing approach to Postal gives the film a surreal quality similar to watching a train-wreck in slow motion as it goes through a public school and into a nursing home. Postal is out to push hot buttons and believe me; Uwe Boll doesn’t hold anything back. Why should Boll give a crap about anyone’s feelings at this point; he’s already hated by a legion of online video game nuts and has critics comparing him to Ed Wood. When you’re pushed into a corner and got nothing to lose it can give you a considerable amount of artistic freedom.
I know there’s going to be a cult audience for this movie; Postal is pretty much tailor made for that kind of fan-base and the distributor’s idea to censor the film’s official release will only help its growing reputation. Postal is easily Boll’s best film to date and the style of the film compliments Boll’s own erratic scattershot approach to filmmaking. Fans of the video game Postal can breath easy in the knowledge that Boll has apparently kept in many of the important themes from the source material; namely shooting Asian stereotypes, using cats as make-shift silencers, and mowing down innocent children in gun-fights.
One way or the other, I don’t think we’ve heard the last of the infamous Dr. Boll; he’s like Freddy Kruger at this point, the only way to get rid of him is to ignore him, which is easier said than done. As long as there is one video game fan out there with a smidgen of hope that a decent movie could be made out of the HALO franchise Uwe Boll will live on.
Popularity: 19% [?]
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