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Categories: Commentary
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Postal
Directed by Uwe Boll
Starring Zack Ward, Dave Foley, and Jackie Tohn
Movie released: May 23, 2008
DVD released: Aug. 26, 2008
Also on Blu-rayIn explaining Uwe Boll, critics often summon the spectre of Ed Wood. Postal lays Wood’s ghost to rest, but Lloyd Kaufman better watch his back. Boll’s Postal, the movie adaptation of Running With Scissors’ game series, is clearly on Troma turf.
Postal starts on 9-11 with terrorists in the cockpit of one of the World Trade Center bound planes learning that due to the increased number of martyrs, fewer virgins are available in Paradise. If that’s not too soon, then you’re definitely ready for the Nazi-themed Little Germany park (an annexed Little Holland) run by Uwe Boll in a self-referencing cameo. In a deleted scene Boll reveals that his grandfather died in Auschwitz. He fell from a guard tower.
Weaved from convoluted plot threads, Postal follows a day in the life of Postal Dude (Zack Ward) and his run-ins with Osama “Sammy” bin Laden (Larry Thomas), cult leader Uncle Dave (Dave Foley), and Verne Troyer. Incredibly rare and valuable Krotchy Dolls provide the motivation for a series of chase scenes and shootouts resulting in a narrative which, while messy, allows Boll to skillfully skewer a number of targets.
Consider a job interview where one of the questions is, “Imagine you’re in a box. How do you think outside it? Wrong!,” or a massacre in a welfare clinic where the survivors check the dead bodies for lower ticket numbers.
Postal, filmed in the part of British Columbia which looks exactly like Arizona, is intentionally offensive and intentionally funny. As a satire of business, government, and religion, Postal is on equal footing with Office Space, Team America, and South Park. Maybe it’s that, at this point in his career, Boll doesn’t have anything left to lose — or maybe he feels like he no longer has to prove anything, but Boll crosses so many lines here his work on Postal can only be described as an act of bravery.
Postal hasn’t made me reconsider House of the Dead or Alone in the Dark, and I still have grave reservations about Far Cry, but I am comfortable calling Postal a success.
DVD Special Features: “Raging Boll” — Uwe Boll boxes his critics, Behind the Scenes in Little Germany, Verne Troyer calls out Harrison Ford, Commentary by Uwe Boll, and PC game Postal 2.