It’s not gonna win any awards, but this bloated nonsense handily sucks you into its seasick action. Part of the appeal on first viewing is wondering just how far they’re gonna go with the Mad Max rip-offs. You’ve got your intense loner anti-hero, you’ve got your lawless and devolved future society, you’ve got your feral child, you’ve got your weird guy in a ramshackle flying machine, and you’ve got your villains who look like they’re in a punk rock band. Another part of the appeal is enjoying how miscast Kevin Costner is as the hero. An earthy actor, Costner always smacks of a farm boy all grown up and he’s about as comfortable in a sci-fi setting as Sylvester Stallone would be in a chick flick. Imagine Gary Cooper playing Flash Gordon. From the very first scene, Costner feels all wrong here, but you’ve got two hours and fifteen minutes left to go, so you may as well sit back and savor his wrongness. 
As for the more earnest pleasures here, the action sequences are wild and gripping. Bodies and bullets fly frantically across the screen in breakneck Road Warrior style. Also, the depiction of a bizarre world in which the polar ice caps are long melted and, as a result, oceans cover the entire Earth—with the exception of the possibly mythical “Dryland” that everyone in the movie is trying to find—is well-executed and believable as long as you don’t stop to wonder where they’re growing the tobacco for all those cigarettes that bad guy Dennis Hopper constantly smokes.
Today, this has a reputation as a major bomb and all-around failure, but it does have its cult following. In the middle of production, Hollywood reporters and gossips pounced on the film over news that it had gone far over-budget, was endlessly troubled by weather—one major set in Hawaii was destroyed by a hurricane—and that Kevin Costner and director Kevin Reynolds had a falling-out toward the end with Costner wresting creative control from Reynolds in the final edit. A three-hour director’s cut was later released for TV showings.