This is my favorite film of all time. Excellent story, beautiful score, perfect direction and wonderfully acted. The reluctant leader who starts a movement reminds us why people will lay their lives down for the cause of freedom. Especially poignant for today, with all the statues of our leaders and forefathers coming down. Like the postman, no man is perfect. But the ideas that they stand on and promulgate are the only things powerful enough to make humans free against the inertia of tyranny and selfishness. And we would be wise to remember and study those ideas. Watch The Postman again. It is a near-perfect movie from a talented story teller in Kevin Costner.

Listen I know that Costner has a rep. For long drawn out story lines and his movies can be on the slow side, but give this one a chance, it makes you feel proud at the end and I tell you that you will not feel like you wasted your time and if you do I will refund your money on this review, with your receipt of course.

It is Post-Apocalyptic, but don't hold that against it, it has some great twists and turns, it has action and even some romance, if you are into that sort of thing and in the end you feel better about the world in general. I enjoyed 2 bowls of Popcorn and a beer with this movie.

Who knows you may want to hug your postal carrier after this movie.

Who, you ask, is David Brin? He is a renowned writer of science fiction who authored the book on which the film is based. Not only did he think the film was an excellent effort, he and Costner collaborated on the moral message the story was meant to convey, and Brin himself was "ecstatic" with Costner playing his hero. That's good enough for me.

But in fact, as a lover both of science fiction in general, and of those stories with a vast sweep involving the entire society, particularly apocalypse stories, I found the film outstanding in all ways, even deeply touching, at the first and all subsequent viewings. It creates its post-apocalypse world without exaggeration and assigns it a direct cause - not radioactivity or plague, but disconnectedness, lack of communication. The society fragments and falls into survival mode, not from political motives, but because it is simply impossible to organize on any scale without the means of communication offered by something as humble and basic as snail mail - delivered if necessary on foot and by horseback, just as was in fact done in the past.

Not only Costner, but the entire cast, are outstanding, and the rise of authoritarians on the right in the USA and abroad shows just how sinister is the idea of a copier salesman with delusions of grandeur. The film can be said to have anticipated the rise of the Tea Party and other usurpers of cooperation and compromise, who seek to break our civilized norms down in order to recreate the society in their own authoritarian image. And just as in the film, our best defense is solid communication and joint action by those who are the real defenders of family values and individual rights.

A superb film in all ways. Don't believe the haters.