#Postman download for window movie

Clearly the Holnist rank and file – even willing ones who accept their life as the “least worst” of a rotten set of options – still pine for the happier and gentler things that they have lost, and would welcome an alternative if they saw one. However, for me at least this nitpick is more than offset by the touching (and revealing) scene at the film show, where Bethlehem’s men indignantly reject Universal Soldier in favour of The Sound of Music. After all, Nathan Holn’s original followers must have had some reason for following him.

#Postman download for window movie

Here I feel the movie “cheats” a little, passing over the motives of those who accepted the Holnist life. Compared to that, service under Bethlehem might really not seem so bad Yet in the film the only character who expresses that view is shown as a dimwit, hardly above the level of the village idiot. Yet in this situation, he could probably get quite a few, given that most young men there may well have few job options other than unmechanised farm labour, ie a lifetime contemplating the south ends of northbound mules. Thus when Bethlehem rides into town, he immediately starts conscripting, without the slightest effort to find volunteers. This is my one real grumble about the film, which I feel overdoes it a bit, turning the Holnists into cardboard villains. Though Brin’s Holnists follow a “Might Is Right” philosophy, and practice a form of serfdom, this does not appear to be on racial lines. In the book, by contrast, we are explicitly told that their founder, Nathan Holn, was *not* a racist. His men even kill and eat Costner’s mule, because a cross-breed of horse and donkey has no place in the New Order. Bethlehem is decidedly racist, rejecting one draftee for being of Asian origin, and closely inspecting another for possible Black ancestry. The Holnists as a movement do, but there are important differences in the movie version. However, his hopes are quickly dashed by the arrival of the Bad Guys, a self-appointed militia group called Holnists, who roam around exacting tribute (and conscripts) from the townships They are led by one General Bethlehem, who does not appear in the book. He is met with some scepticism, especially by the local sheriff, but enough people believe him to encourage him to keep up the masquerade. He finds the remains of a US postman, with a bag of old mail some of which, providentially, is addressed to people in the next town at which he calls.Ĭostner secures admission by claiming to be a a real postman, working for a (fictionally) restored US government. He doesn’t have much luck on that score, as most already have as many people as they can support, until he gets an unexpected break. Set in a near-future America devastated by a nuclear/biological war, it follows the fortunes of an itinerant who wanders around the scattered townships which remain, in the hope of finding one to take him in.

Kevin Costner’s movie version of David Brin’s sf novel (or rather, mainly the first of its three sections) has had a decidedly bad press, but looking back from 2021 it is difficult to see why.