Movie Review: Postal (2007) by Stuart Taylor

George Carlin once said, ‘it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.’ The tagline for Uwe Boll’s Postal states, ‘Some comedies go to far… other’s start there.’ And so we begin a hundred minute exercise in shock-spoofery. By coincidence, the philosophy of crossing the boundaries of taste and offensiveness have been touched on this week by Steven Baxter and Richard Herring, among others, thanks to Ricky Gervais’s trying to reclaim the word ‘mong’ for downtrodden comedians everywhere. In the hands of a competant writer/director, there is a chance that Postal could have been a very, very dark but brilliant comedy. And I mean that. I think.

What I didn’t realise is that Postal is, like most of Boll’s back catalogue, a video game adaptation. Apparently the game is an isometric shoot-em-up, featuring a protagonist at the end of his tether, shooting the crap out of everything and everyone – shooting enemies is rewarded, but shooting innocents is neither good or bad. And so, Uwe Boll has chosen the thinnest possible plot line from which to hang his movie.

The opening scene takes place on September 11th, in the cockpit of one of the hi-jacked planes. Yup, this is where we’re going. The Islamic hijackers are arguing over how many virgins their martyrdom will bring. To clear matters up, they phone Bin Laden, who informs them that due to an over-subscription to the martyr programme, there aren’t as many virgins to go around – he can only guarantee twenty virgins each. Disgruntled, the pilots agree to change course for the Bahamas, but the passengers break in to the cockpit, the plane loses control and smashes into the World Trade Centre.

We see the action from the WTC window cleaner's perspective - it's comedy, see?

Normally I’d step through the movie scene by scene so we could relive the magic together, but with Postal, it would be pointless. The film is a long series of quick, sketch-like scenes that loosely tie together by the characters and skinny heist plot. In this case, I’d like to set up an investigation to work out what the hell Uwe Boll was trying to achieve in many of his scenes. You see, from art-house to Arnie, all films strive to fulfil a purpose: making you think; making you laugh; making you gasp nun backflipping over an exploding oil tanker while firing twin machine guns. As Uwe Boll wrote and directed this film, rather than leaving a bunch of props and actors in the hands of a bunch of tame chumpanzees, you’d have to assume that he wrote each scene with a purpose in mind. Today we shall explore these purposes and try and understand Uwe Boll, the man and Postal, his inbred manchild of a baby.

The plot is thus: a downbeat loser called ‘Dude’ is fed up of his unemployed trailer-park life, his obese adulterous wife and the world in general. He teams up with his Uncle Dave, a cult leader of a religious of his invention, to attempt a heist on a shipment of Krotchy Dolls, the world’s most sought after toy. Simultaneously, the Taliban are attempting the same heist, not for profit, but to inject each doll with Bird Flu, to take down America. Amazing how quickly Bird Flu becomes un-topical, isn’t it? The climax involves a shootout between Dude, the cult and the Taliban, resulting in death, destruction and Dude riding off into the sunset with a hot girl. Then George W Bush nukes China and India. But that’s not important.

Investigation 1: The Racist Policemen

Description: There are two side characters in Boll’s film, a xenophobic policeman and his partner. They are introduced by the xenophobic policeman getting angry at an elderly Chinese woman for getting confused at a traffic light. He shoots her in the face repeatedly several times with a shotgun. No one bats an eyelid. Later, it’s revealed that the xenophobic policeman wheels a heavily disabled man around in order to leave him to collect change from kindly passers by. The role of the policemen ends when Dude finds them having a threesome with his obese wife and blows them up.

What did Boll mean to express?: There are several ways of exploring the themes introduced through the policemen. Perhaps Uwe Boll really despises Chinese women and the disabled, but really loves obese women. Sure, the obese woman dies at the end, but what a way to go! She died at she lived: enjoying a spitroast. In a way, the cops take on the role of a protagonist in a revenge film: acting out against the world in ways that we, the viewers, never could. If you happen to hate the Chinese and the disabled, perhaps you will cheering along as the policemen shoot and abuse them? Their reward is to spend the ends of their lives smothered in sexy obesity and you, the racist, ableist viewer feel vindicated.

Then again, perhaps Boll has something to say about the US police system. Has it become so corrupt that they can shoot anyone they dislike? Is that the message Boll intends for us? Should we be investigating the LAPD to see if its officers have pet quadriplegic pals? If only Academy Award™ Winning  Crash had managed to construct police characters so deep and nuanced, it might have won an… oh. Never mind.

Investigation 2: The Welfare Office

Description: I’ve never had to collect job allowance, but based on this scene, I suspect that a welfare office is a little like a Post Office. Here, Dude is attempting to collect his welfare cheque, when an frustrated customer opens fire. The police attempt to fire back, but a bizarre shootout erupts, resulting in most innocents being shot down, while Dude crawls along the floor trying to find a better ticket number among the dead. The welfare clerks appear to be unfazed by the slaughter on the other side of the glass.

A similar scene occurs later, when Dude accidentally sets off a shootout at a kids’ amusement park. While Dude runs for cover, the Taliban and the police force shoot wildly at each other, seeming only to be able to hit young children and disabled people. Later, a reporter arranges the bodies of the dead children in an aesthetically pleasing way, to sit in the frame of her TV new report.

This boy is being shot, though here it does look a bit like he's being stabbed in the back by a malevolent cone of chips

What did Boll mean to express?: I’m starting to get the picture now. Boll definitely hates the disabled. He must also assume the viewer hates the disabled too and we’re meant to be laughing and cheering along to this scene. Luckily, we at Shouting at Cows have always begrudged the disabled, with their fancy gadgetry and massive toilets; finally someone gives us the cathartic movie scene we’ve long been waiting for. Children, too – far too long have they been the survivors of action films. Not any more. Stupid children with their snotty noses and their tiny bladders and their inability to sit still on trains: ‘Why doesn’t the Taliban just shoot them, already?’ is a frequent thought of ours. And now, Boll allows us to live out our fantasy through the magic of cinema.

Perhaps it’s funny? Perhaps it’s supposed to be a jolt of the unexpected – the audience expects the vulnerable people to escape unscathed, so to mow them down with gay abandon is hilarious. I can dig that, as a concept. But one needs to put effort into their concepts; ‘child gets killed’ isn’t funny on its own, you have to set it up to surprise. You can really work with the fact that the audience simply won’t believe you’re about to wipe out tens of children – have them run in to save the day, only to get utterly annihilated. Make a freaking effort, here, Boll. A custard pie isn’t funny as a concept, you need to ram it into the Queen’s face as she’s giving the Christmas address. Also, it should be revealed the Queen is allergic to custard pies and that her dress is made of a precious material that dissolves when mixed with custard. So now you’ve got the Queen, live on TV, on Christmas day, covered in custard, bursting into hives, in her underpants - that’s better.

Investigation 3: The Krotchy Doll

Description: They are plush crotches that say crotch-related things. They are in such high demand that they are selling for thousands on eBay.

Conclusion: crotches are hilarious?

What did Bole mean to express?:  Boll is making a statement about the youth of today being sexualised at far too young an age – the kids at the theme park, ‘Little Germany’, all love the Krotchy Doll and they are all mercilessly massacred. This is basically analogous to Nadine Dorries’s philosophy on young women and sexual education.

On the other hand, considering America’s utterly appalling track record on sexual education, perhaps the progressive-minded, German-born Boll is pushing the thought that kids are crying out for a role model like Krotchy. If only those tight-fighted bureaucrats would pumps some funds into better, proactive sex education, America’s children will jump at the opportunity to learn. This is consistent with Uncle Dave’s sexually liberated lifestyle, the open (if unbalanced) marriage between Dude and his obese wife and Verne Troyer’s huge glowing dildo (see next item). I mean, what else could be implied from having hundreds of screaming children cheering and reaching towards Uwe Boll’s giant, standing penis?

It’s difficult to pick out Boll’s ideology as he blends the Krotchy Doll frenzy with with an Islamic attack and a heist of bikini-clad, cultist glamour models dressed as Hitler.

Investigation 4: The Woes of Verne Troyer

Description: Verne Troyer is in this film! Verne is the actor who played Mini Me, in case you weren’t sure. Verne, like J K Simmons, actually appeared in this film against his agent’s desperate advice. He plays himself, working as a celebrity ambassador for Krotchy Dolls, welcoming the shipment to Little Germany. Like most celebrity “as themselves” cameos, Verne plays a exaggerated evil alter-ego: he swears constantly, he accepts payment in gold teeth (I think this is a Nazi joke?) and his swanky briefcase contains only sex toys and fetish gear.

Sadly for Verne, the ambitious second-in-command to Uncle Dave’s cult kidnaps the small actor as he believes he is due to fulfil Uncle Dave’s biblical prophesy. You see, Uncle Dave wrote his own version of the bible, which claims that at the dawn of the apocalypse ‘a tiny entertainer shall be raped by a thousand monkeys’. The Sous-Dave has prepared a chamber of a thousand monkeys, throws Verne Troyer into their randy community and we, the viewer, are privileged enough to watch a small, bald actor be raped by a thousand monkeys. And to think Troyer’s agent didn’t want him to be in this film!

Verne, inside Lindsay Lohan, after an unfortunate over-lubing accident

What did Bole mean to express?: Interestingly, Verne Troyer isn’t the only actor playing himself. Uwe Boll, playing himself, owns Little Germany and he too is present at the Krotchy unveiling. He introduced by a TV host as ‘the director of all those hit video game movies’ and it attacked by the maker of the video game, Postal, who is dressed as a giant penis. Anyway, what does it all meeeeaaaan?

It’s funny when little people swear. It’s like when kids swear, only he’s an adult so you get to give him a dildo without things going all Roman Polanski. Look at him – he’s tiny and he’s got a dildo! It’s genius. Tiny people shouldn’t have dildos – it makes no sense! This is surrealist comedy at its peak. We also have to consider the nature of celebrity. Just like Down’s Syndrome enthusiast, Ricky Gervais explored the strange world of the celebrity among the common folk – or ‘little people’ – here we have Boll turning the idea on its head by turning the celebrity into a little person. Sure, Gervais still did it first, with the wonderful Warwick Davies, but who’s paying attention anyway? Boll wants to remind us that celebrities are no better than the rest of us, that our worth is not determined by our wealth or fame, but by our… ability to steal children’s toys, I guess. It’s unclear. But, what is clear is that while you may be a rich, famous Hollywood idol, you can still be raped by a thousand monkeys like the rest of us.

What remains up for debate is why Uwe Boll placed himself in the film. And why he gets shot in the penis.

Conclusions

I’ve barely had a chance to mention the Taliban. In truth, they fade into the background – they could easily be removed from this film entirely and barely change a thing (except for the constant stream of pretty racist Muslim jokes). So Osama Bin Laden has a hotline to his pal, George W Bush; the Taliban play pool and read ‘Jihad’ magazine; they are a rag-tag bunch of no-hopers; they suicide bomb J K Simmons on a whim, without anyone batting an eyelid. All these things happen, but for no real reason. The Taliban subplot is meaningless, though it does provide the ‘moneyshot’ ending – George Bush and Bin Laden skipping together, holding hands in a field, while China rains down nuclear war upon America.

Uwe Boll describes this as his ‘most important movie’. Perhaps he said this because it contains “politics” and some kind of satire. Perhaps because his other films are House of the Dead and Bloodrayne. We may never know what goes on in Uwe Boll’s head or why he keeps getting money to make movies without the multi-million dollar profits of the similarly one-dimensional Michael Bay. For us, Uwe Boll remains a mystery and his attempts to cross lines of decency strikes not of bravery or of wit, but of attention seeking; much like how flying planes into skyscrapers is not a striking political statement, but a witless pie to the face.

At the beginning, I said this could have been a brilliant (if dark and somewhat distasteful) comedy. Films like Four Lions have ventured successfully into similar arenas. The ingredients are all present in this film to make something wonderful and thoughtful: a humanised Taliban army, a de-humanised bureaucratic America, a government in bonds with Bin Laden, the hypnotic effect of neo-cults on the average citizen. All are used lazily as MacGuffins to Boll’s lazy, crass, childish japes.

By the way, this was a shit movie.

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