Movie Review: Kevin Costner’s ‘Horizon: An American Saga, Chapter 1’

Horizon: An American Saga, Chapter 1 has attracted all kinds of attention, but not for the reasons that actor-hyphenate Kevin Costner would prefer. 

Even before the premiere of the first “chapter” (when was this phrase ever associated with a movie?), the film was being reviewed not for its plot, acting, or direction, but for its budget—or, more specifically, Costner’s budget.

A director friend of mine insists that its rumored expenditure has been distorted—it’s amortized over the four films projected rather than this first one. But whatever the correct amount (I’ve seen ranges from $38 million to $100 million), it was evidently enough that Costner felt compelled to sell one of his properties to help finance the series.

Speaking of “series,” Costner’s involvement in Horizon ended up being so intense and protracted that he decided to forego appearing on the last season of his long-running TV show, Yellowstone.

All of this is beside the point. Costner’s money is his to spend and no concern of yours or mine. To the extent it matters at all, it is whether the box office for the first installment in this “American Saga” allows the remaining ones to be seen first in theaters (Costner’s preference) or to be streamed at home.

Ah—that’s the rub.

Though Costner might have looked to John Ford, Howard Hawks, and Anthony Mann for guidance on how to fill a magnificent Western landscape, he seems to have gravitated more towards the multi-character, multi-plot P.T. Anderson 1999 movie Magnolia—only not in that film’s three-hour running time, but over the three remaining in his series, too.

The ideal audience for this kind of project—patient, willing to follow characters over time—is not sitting in a theater, but in front of a suitably large home theater projection screen. Maybe that’s why “Chapter 1” did not perform up to expectations, leading the second part to be delayed past its August 16 premiere date.

Evidently, Costner’s production company, Territory Pictures and Horizon's distribution partner New Line Cinema, hope to grow the audience for the second installment through widespread exposure in the next few weeks, including on PVOD and Max.

Perhaps more than any star today, Costner has found the western a congenial genre. Silverado provided him with the first signature onscreen time, and Dances With Wolves briefly made him the king of Hollywood, with Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture.

Wyatt Earp and Open Range continued his fascination with this form as old as Hollywood itself. And, when his career hit a trough a decade ago, it was a small-screen modern western, Yellowstone, that thrust him back squarely into the forefront of Hollywood again.

It took the actor 35 years—even before he started work on Dances With Wolves—to begin bringing this new sprawling work to the screen. With Horizon, Costner and co-screenwriter Jon Baird want to tell a story unlike any the actor has tried before.

Promotional men, farmers, gunslingers, soldiers, gamblers, prostitutes, and Native Americans all contest a narrow space along Arizona’s San Pedro River Valley, starting in 1859, a couple of years before the Civil War. In a sense, this convergence of different groups on the frontier represented the first American “clash of civilizations.”

The plot contains so many threads that Costner himself doesn’t appear onscreen, as grizzled horse trader Hayes Ellison, until nearly an hour goes by. Worse, so many characters are introduced before being quickly shuffled off to the next segment that keeping them all straight becomes confusing at times. Viewers may find themselves wishing for longer glimpses of the more recognizable other actors (e.g., Sienna Miller, Luke Wilson, Michael Rooker) in the large cast.

However much money Costner poured into the movie, viewers get their money’s worth.

Shot mostly in Utah, the vistas—low-angle shots of the sky, open plains and mountain ranges—are as sweeping as anything in John Ford’s Monument Valley oaters. Some sequences—including 45 minutes of a family withstanding an Apache attack—are breathlessly tense.

Theodore Roosevelt, an advocate of continental expansion, titled his history of the western movement The Winning of the West. But in this first installment of Costner’s saga, few viewers will regard anybody in this struggle “winning.”

Far from being “wide open spaces,” this land was already occupied, and entailed the displacement of those already there and the shock and alienation of those who, in oncoming, unstoppable waves, moved in.

Native Americans, of course, lost their lands. But settlers lost family members in every conceivable situation (natural disasters, Indian attacks, homesteader-cattle baron conflicts); soldiers saw too much corruption and violence to hold onto their innocence about government’s good intentions; and even opportunists and bullies learned not to trust their good fortune for very long.

As the Baird-Costner screenplay makes plain, debate and division even within each side often further complicated this struggle for the American interior.

In extended dialogue rendered in subtitles, young Native American warriors angry at white seizure of their lands burn with indignation as tribal elders warn of the dangers of massive retaliation. On the other hand, soldiers trying desperately to keep a tentative peace bemoan the continuing wagon trains that make this well-nigh impossible.

Chapters 1 and 2 of Horizon will premiere in early September at the Venice International Film Festival. I hope industry observers who have written off this ambitious saga will use the opportunity to see it on the big screen to rethink any urge to call it “Kevin’s Gate.”

Whatever its flaws in marketing and execution, Horizon is an honorable attempt to tell the true story of the American West in all its complexity, with skill and love. If it doesn’t find its audience in 2024, it surely will in years to come, if given the chance.