Very broad satire
- Written by Uwe Boll and Bryan C. Knight; based on the video game
- Directed by Uwe Boll
Postal starts with a promising scene for an intentionally offensive comedy. Two terrorists in an airliner cockpit (presumably on 9/11) discuss how many virgins they’ll get in the afterlife. It turns out they’ve been given different numbers, and one calls “Osama” on his cell phone for clarification. They’re just about ready to call it quits and reroute the plane to the Bahamas when the passengers break down the cockpit door.
Enjoy the scene while you can. It has more laughs than the rest of the movie.
I don’t know much about video games, and didn’t realize Postal was based on one before screening a review copy. I probably would have skipped it if I’d known. My son, who knows a good deal about video games, is no fan of movies based on them.
The plot involves a desperately unhappy, unemployed man (Zack Ward) who agrees to help a phony religious cult led by his uncle (Dave Foley) rob a truckload of very popular yet unavailable dolls. Complicating matters, the dolls are also the target of a secret Taliban cell led by Osama bin Laden (I’m not sure if the Taliban/Al-Qaeda confusion was intentional).
Within the context of this story, Boll attempts to satirize such ripe targets as evil corporations, 
hippy cults, morbidly obese nymphomaniacs, Arabs, trailer trash, racial minorities, little people, George W. Bush, and our fascination with Nazis. He probably thinks of himself as an equal-opportunity offender, which would be okay if he actually earned some laughs along the way.
As Postal moves into its second half, he tries mainly to be funny about gun violence. Everyone shoots indiscriminately, people die in mass numbers, and none of it has a point. Boll apparently finds the idea of a little kid blasted away by crossfire to be outrageously funny; one gunfight sequence repeats that “gag” at least three times.
In the end, it’s not the sheer offensiveness of Postal that weighs it down, although that doesn’t help. It’s the almost complete absence of any real humor.
Postal, rated R for everything a film can be rated R for, opens Friday at the Roxie.
Bayflicks 