XPDay

I am anything but a Kevin Costner fan. From American Flyers (shmaltzy), to No Way Out (implausibly stupid), to Dances with Wolves (manipulative), to Waterworld (just awful), to Field of Dreams (overly sentimental), I've hated or seriously disliked all of his projects.

Perhaps that's why it took me seven years and a DVD bargain bin to summon up enough courage and the five dollars to view The Postman. After all, every one of those negative parenthesized adjectives above appear in this comment forum in regard to The Postman.

I expected to hate it, but...but.. I LOVE THIS MOVIE!!

Kevin Costner is still a mediocre actor, but perhaps he was made for this part, the part of a mediocre conniver raised to *perceived* greatness by the hunger of a suppressed human spirit.

The three hour length of this story is greatly criticized. Could this tale be told in less? A simpler story, maybe. But there is just too much to understand under the surface here. Anyone's appreciation of the power of good in our American culture can't help but be aroused by a careful 3-hour viewing and some thoughtful reflection.

Now I probably sound shmaltzy, but heaven help me, this turned out to be the best movie I've seen this year.

I have read all the comments that point out the huge differences between

Clancy's book and this movie.

Well, all the Jack Ryan movies differ greatly from the books. They have to. I enjoy the movies, but I don't watch them with the notion that I will see a full Clancy novel transfered to film. The Sum of All Fears alone would require a

major miniseries to fill in all the characters and details.

OK...My opinion of Ben Afleck playing Ryan would still be pretty negative in the miniseries version.

That said, I must also say that this particular Jack Ryan outing is notable for the screenwriters', the director's and Liev Schreiber's rendition of John Clark. Clark is one of the most fascinating of Clancy's continuing characters and this

matches my vision of the Clark character to a "T."