The Postman is a 1997 American epic post-apocalyptic adventure film produced and directed by Kevin Costner, who plays the lead role.

In a post-apocalyptic world in 2013, an unnamed nomad wanders the scattered communities of the Utah flatlands, trading performances of long-forgotten Shakespearean plays for food and water.

At one town, the nomad is forced at gunpoint into the ranks of the Holnists, a neo-feudalist militia, and is branded on his shoulder with their symbol, a figure 8.

The Holnists, under their leader, General Bethlehem, are the de facto authority in the area, collecting tribute and recruits from local towns.

He convinces Pineview's leader, Sheriff Briscoe, to let him in by showing a letter addressed to elderly villager Irene March.

The postman inspires a teenager named Ford Lincoln Mercury, who asks to be sworn in as a member of the postal service and even helps him to reactivate the long abandoned post office in the town.

When the postman leaves for the town of Benning, he carries a pile of mail left at the post office door by the townspeople.

During a raid of Pineview, General Bethlehem learns of the postman's tales of a restored government in Minneapolis and becomes afraid of losing power if word spreads.

Thirty years later, the postman's grown daughter Hope, accompanied by other public figures and servicemen (including postal workers), speaks at a ceremony unveiling a bronze statue by territorial waters in St. Rose, Oregon, in tribute to her father, who has recently died (1973–2043).

Her speech, along with the fact that all the attendees are wearing modern clothing and using technology, reveal that the postman and his mail carriers' actions have helped rebuild the United States.

On his personal website, author David Brin reveals that while studios were bidding for The Postman, his wife decided during a screening of Field of Dreams that Kevin Costner should portray the title character.

"[7] The Postman was filmed in Metaline Falls and Fidalgo Island in Washington; central Oregon; and southern Arizona around Amado and Nogales.

Despite the film performing disastrously at two test screenings, Costner refused Warner Bros.' appeals that he edit it from its three-hour running time.

The site's consensus states: "A massive miscalculation in self-mythologizing by director and star Kevin Costner, The Postman would make for a goofy good time if it weren't so fatally self-serious.

[15] In the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert described The Postman as a failed yet well-meant effort at a parable, being "goofy", "pretentious", and "way too long", yet "good-hearted".