Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1 - Review 

Rating: 3 out of 5

KEVIN Costner has several Western classics to his name, from Dances With Wolves to Open Range and Silverado. Hopes were therefore high for Horizon, his self-penned and directed Old West saga. But Chapter 1 flatters to deceive.

It looks great, is steeped in classic Western values and boasts a strong cast. But it also feels self-indulgent and asks too much of its audience without being prepared to give enough back.

Costner’s decision to split the film into multiple parts (he envisages four) is nothing new in an age where cinema likes to build franchises with continuing storylines (see Marvel, Avatar, Fast & Furious et al). But where those films all managed to set up future instalments with post-credit teasers or unfinished threads, Horizon unfolds like an opening chapter and doesn’t provide any closure.

In fact, the film feels like three hours of set-up. There’s a beginning, no middle and certainly no end in sight.

Chapter 2 was supposed to have followed into cinemas hot on the heels of Chapter 1 - but a dismal box office performance put paid to those plans to book-end the summer release schedule and cast the future of the project in doubt. The faith Costner obviously expected from audiences didn’t bear fruit.

Streaming may yet afford Costner the opportunity to realise his complete vision. But you can’t escape the nagging feeling that streaming is where Horizon may have found its most loyal audience - as an event series, where the epic could have played out.

To be fair, it would be a shame if the complete Horizon never saw the light of day. There is enough in Chapter 1 to suggest it’s a story worth following in spite of its flaws. But there’s definitely a sense that this first film meanders when it should really gallop towards audience attention.

The film starts promisingly enough with a settlement attacked by Apache Indians and largely massacred (Sienna Miller’s mother, Frances, survives with a semi-mute daughter but still loses half of her family). It’s an intense opening that is filmed from several perspectives - capturing the brutality of an Indian attack as well as the fear inherent in either trying to survive it or accept death.

But while technically impressive and well acted, there’s also questions to be asked about creative choices, as the decision to open with an act of merciless aggression by America’s Indigenous people seems somewhat retro (more akin to a John Wayne film) than anything revisionist (a la Dances With Wolves or the Netflix limited series American Primeval).

Costner does return to the stories of both aggressors and survivors, with the former leader of the war party that instigates the massacre questioned over the wisdom of his actions by fellow tribal elders. But the script feels tokenistic, so far refusing to condemn or even acknowledge the genocide committed by the occupiers.

Latterly, some of the survivors of the massacre are seen forming their own militia and committing scalp-hunting massacres of their own. But, again, this lacks nuance.

Elsewhere, we have Costner himself playing a drifter named Hayes Ellison, whose decision to accept the advances of a prostitute named Marigold (Abbey Lee), quickly place him at odds with a gunslinger named Caleb Sykes (Jamie Campbell Bower), whom he is forced to kill, before going on the run with Marigold and the child she is looking after for her sister (Jena Malone), who is also on the run from the Sykes family for slaying one of their abusive men.

And then there’s another strand involving a wagon train of settlers led by Matthew Van Weyden (Luke Wilson), who must deal with food and water shortages, the ever-present risk of attack, dissection from within and a couple of entitled Brits who refuse to pull their weight.

Frances, meanwhile, recovers from her ordeal at the start of the film to commence a fledgling romance with the handsome First Lt Trent Gephardt (Sam Worthington), who was among the soldiers who came to her aid in the immediate aftermath of the massacre.

Horizon boasts a lot of moving parts, none of which - as yet - appear to be heading for any notable crossover. Yet, the decision to afford so much time to setting each of those parts in motion deprives the overall story of any real momentum.

There’s potential in most of the characters - but it may never be realised.

Another gripe extends to the film’s production values, which are extravagant to say the least. Scenes are largely set against the sun-drenched, Monument Valley style backdrops that should have the US tourist board salivating, while the various outfits worn by all characters are pristine in design and impressively clean (much in the same way as the well cared for hairstyles of the women and facial hair of the men).

This does not feel befitting of the harsh conditions these early settlers were doubtless forced to endure (whether extreme dust or heat, or severe cold and harsh wind and rain), and which have since been captured far more realistically by the likes of The Revenant or American Primeval.

Rather, it’s a deeply romanticised approach - an example of which can be found in the lingering, beautifully backlit sequence in which a partially naked character is caught bathing. Some may even call it exploitative.

Costner, you feel, is capable of better. His past work, especially in this genre, suggests as much. But this feels more like an ode to an outdated Western approach - even though there are still nods to more contemporary understandings of what really took place. The tone feels indecisive.

Horizon is therefore a mixed bag of a movie - a vanity project that intrigues and entertains, which looks good and is well acted, but which also struggles to find a consistent tone, asks too much of its audience and feels like something of a backward step for historical representation and understanding.

A pre-credits showreel of future highlights suggests there’s a lot more action to come. But whether audiences (or distributors and/or streaming platforms) will afford Costner the opportunity to show us remains to be seen. The future of this saga feels as precarious as the journey that most of its characters are on.