Uwe Boll in Vancouver: A 'Postal' Review

I'll come right out and say it: I'd never seen a film of Uwe Boll's. The German director's career took off (for better or worse) with House of the Dead, an '03 adaptation of the 90s light-gun arcade game. Since then he's been the go-to man for mid-profile video game adaptations, with films including 'Alone in the Dark' and the 'BloodRayne' series. My game-to-film watching days ended at Jean Claude as Guile. And after HoTD's universally scathing reviews, Boll's work sealed a spot on my list of films to avoid. The guys been dubbed the Ed Wood of our generation... he prefers to call himself "the only fucking genius" of our generation.

So why was I jumping at the chance to see his newest film 'Postal' when Only announced the sneak preview? Well, 'cause the thing about Uwe Boll is that he makes statements like the above. By Hollywood standards he's batshit insane; the apex of Uwe-chaos reached during his boxing-ring takedown of five internet critics (you may have heard about it, as it happened here in Vancouver) and subsequent challenges to Michael Bay. After a quick IMDB search, I found out that 'Postal' is Uwe's satirical take on post-9/11 America; staring Dave Foley ('Kids in the Hall', 'Newsradio'), opening with the collapse of the WTC, and boycotted in the States. Um, yes please.

So, although the girlfriend and I were prepared for anything as we stood outside of Granville 7 on Thursday, we were still left pretty damn speechless at the sight of a giant walking penis (photos below), passing out promotional pictures of Osama & Bush holding hands. Soon enough the Only magazine reps showed up to fill us in on the fact that Uwe Boll himself would there for a Q&A. All the raving, politically-incorrect Germanic juice after the jump...

Warning: this review/recap is long -- but without stateside release, this movie won't be getting a lot of press. There's some spoilers, but I'll try not to ruin too much. Short version: Uwe Boll is crazy, Americans are retards, see "Postal" when it comes out.

The Movie

Boll's latest film is an adaptation of the 'Postal' video games, a mildly popular and highly publicized series that was hyped around a gimmick of extremely over-the-top violence; before the Grand Theft Auto sensation. As Uwe put it in his introduction to the movie; a game where one advances only for being mindlessly violent, (extra points for shooting kids or using a cat as a silencer), is the "perfect opportunity" for social commentary.

The giant penis we met in line is an anthropomorphized version of the 'Krotchy doll,' a key plot element that arrives about midway through a movie which starts out as offensive as imaginable, only to progressively slide farther into a seemingly bottomless abyss of 'oh-dear-God-how-can-that -be-funny' satiric absurdity.

The movie opens with a re-creation of the September 11 hijackings. The terrorist pilots get on the cellphone to Osama only to be told that they'll have to share the promised '99 perfect virgins' amongst all their fellow martyrs. The two decide to take the plane to the Bahamas instead, only to be interrupted by vigilante Americans whose own attempt to save the plane results in a collision with the Twin Towers. Cue title card. Although he kept repeating it before and after the film... after the opening five minutes it was pretty clear that Uwe Boll "doesn't give a shit." (Update: Just found it on YouTube... see below)

Soon enough we meet 'Postal Guy,' played by a confidently amoral Zach Ward. We see him belittled by his morbidly-obese, trailer park wife then mocked and rejected at a job interview. Ward's wanderings around the city are an excuse for endless violence against and amongst the Americans of "Paradise, Arizona". Everywhere he steps people are getting into gunfights over only the most frivolous things. Everyone in Paradise is armed, trigger-happy, and completely self-motivated. Far from immune are the police; shown early as our star officer shoots a hearing-imparied elderly Chinese woman in the face because she won't start her car. One particular highlight was a scuffle turned all-out melee in the welfare office... the whole film stinks of bitter anger towards both gun control and the class-divide in America.

After killing a beggar, our hero escapes to the commune of his New Age stoner-hippie uncle (Dave Foley, in a character inspired by Boll's time in Vancouver?). Eventually they hatch a plan to steal a shipment of the aforementioned 'Krotchy Dolls" from the Nazi theme park run by Uwe Boll's himself. Boll isn't afraid to rip on his own image along with everyone else, and Foley is brilliant: I haven't loved watching him on screen this much since Brain Candy. Though was his full-frontal taking-a-dump scene merely an attempt to make the opening seem less offensive? Eventually Al Qaeda and Bin Laden get involved, hiding out in the back of a 7-11 under the eye of George W, they decide that the Krotchy dolls would be the perfect opportunity to stage a post-9/11 attack...

But does it work?

Oh, hell yes. Don't get me wrong, this is ultra low-brow humour, but self-aware low-brow humour. Boll's movie exaggerates and bundles the conventions of the mainstream Hollywood comedy (fat & fart jokes, slapstick & stereotypes) into a blunt attack on American pop culture: a fuck you to everything that fuels the bullshit Hollywood cliches which "Postal" riffs on. The film has a vibe running somewhere between Norbit and Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back, only ten times as relevant and twenty times as ballsy. The best I can think of is... Team America: World Police meets Airplane meets Troma.

'Postal' has been boycotted in all but four American theatres, and it's pretty clear why. The content alone exceeds anything thats come before: while I actually think the scene where a roomful of twelve-year-olds are machine-gunned to death worked; could Uwe really have ever hoped for this movie to be accepted by anyone? But beyond that, the film simply takes brutally frank aim at too many All-American targets: gun control, the war on terror, obesity, poverty... While right-wing America may be easy prey, no one has the guts to say these things quite so candidly and garishly as Mr. Uwe Boll. And he'll be taking the box office hit because of it.

Unsurprisingly, the lampoon eventually gets a little overzealous. I've seen enough Bush impersonations to last a lifetime, and Larry Thomas (Seinfeld's Soup Nazi) flat out failed to make me laugh as Osama. When avian flu, killer bees, and crystal meth start working their way into the mix one almost wants to scream "Stop Uwe, Stop!" And a charming but misused Verne Troyer (that's Mini-Me), playing himself in Uwe's riff on celebrity culture, felt like wasted potential. Though the scene where Troyer uses a glow-in-the-dark dildo as a flashlight does remind me that this movie's sight gags are better than anything in a 'Scary Movie.'

And, although the wide-reaching satire seems thoroughly underdeveloped, such is the style of the film. Drawing inspiration from classic mile-a-minute patchwork comedies like 'Airplane' and 'Monty Python' isn't going to lead to the most focused social commentary. And while Uwe clearly lacks the chops of our comedic greats, he's a hell of a lot funnier than most of the shcleps working out in Hollywood today.

While hardly clever enough to be classified as 'intelligent comedy;' with the outright idiocy of the Bush administration and post-911 American attitudes, it takes a film on this tier of absurdity to provide any kind of compelling counter. I'd say move aside 'Harold & Kumar,' this is the only movie that really takes American hypocrisy by the balls...

The post-film Q&A / Uwe Boll briefly makes the word 'retard' cool again

As per the above, Uwe makes more liberal use of the word "retard" than he does blood-packs and bimbos. While his English vocabulary seems to have been gleaned mainly from the Sony Playstaion web-forums, any public figure who wants to call Bush a "fuck-ass" and a "fucking criminal retard" in public is a-ok with me. It's whats so great about Uwe, and why I'll at least be looking into any of his future projects. The man is far from the most gifted filmmaker, or even the most intelligent human being around... but he's got something the Hollywood system lacks: a willingness to throw out the rules and actually express himself... or at least bullshit on his own terms.

Uwe was actually quite charming... in that overgrown highschool bully kind of way. While a good deal of his talk was spent ranting against Michael Bay and George W, Boll had some compelling thoughts on the complete lack of democracy in the Hollywood system; lamenting the 'same Iron Man bullshit' every week. While keeping the hate flowing, he didn't allow himself to be too bated, side-stepping questions like "who is the worst filmmaker today?" It actually seemed like he was growing tired of his 'fuck everyone retard' self-promotion shtick, and I'm excited for him to focus some energy elsewhere.

For me, on Thursday he was elevated in status from insane German Ed Wood to compelling but crazy, pseudo-politically informed, and gutsy as hell independent filmmaker. Time for a Herzogian rebirth? That or I'll cross my fingers for the 'Grand Theft Auto 4' license and a Micahel Bay-ian budget. Though I'd also settle for a boxing match against Speilberg; man needs a jab in the balls...

'Postal' was filmed locally, and is one foreign-funded Vancouver production which won't be shipped off to Hollywood. Support the hate on May 23 when the film hits Vancouver theaters.

header photo stolen from rotten tomatoes, charming Uwe Boll photo from daily oranse