Horizon: An American Saga—Chapter 1

Rated R • Theaters

The Old West once loomed large in American cinema. For decades Westerns were the most popular film genre, depicting rugged country populated by men and women with a pioneering spirit who won’t be beholden to others. But Hollywood eventually lost interest in the Old West, turning to gritty realism in the 1970s and subsequently to science fiction, action thrillers, and finally comic book movies.

But the genre persisted, and one of its most earnest champions has been Kevin Costner. Not only is Costner responsible for latter-day Westerns like Dances With Wolves (1990), for which he won two Academy Awards, but he brings a Western sensibility to all his movies.

As he enters the twilight of a career that’s spanned five decades, Costner hopes his latest project will rekindle the Western’s lost cinematic glory. He directs and stars in Horizon: An American Saga, an epic set in the Old West that’s intended to span four films.

Chapter 1 is an ambitious film with a huge cast of characters and multiple storylines all converging on a small frontier town called Horizon. Actually, “town” is an overstatement. “Horizon” is more like an idea in this film. People back East who hope to start a new life have been buying plots of land near Horizon, but when they arrive at their destination, they discover it’s up to them to build the town. The movie opens with a single family staking out its claim, but more settlers follow.

The film has three distinct storylines that start branching into even more stories. The first has to do with those families trying to create the imagined town of Horizon. The promise of freedom and wide-open spaces lured these people westward, but Apaches claim the land as their own and worry that these settlers will scare away the herds they rely on for hunting. The film’s tone quickly swings from old-timey optimism to terror when the Indians attack. Some survivors mournfully start over, while others embark on a quest for vengeance.

Kevin Costner’s character Hayes Ellison gets swept up in events of an unrelated storyline. A woman runs away from the abusive father of her child. He’s a bad man who sends other bad men to fetch her home. Hayes is the typical tough guy with a tender heart who steps into the situation. He might not be noble, but he possesses some bygone chivalry, which makes him the enemy of these bad men. A third storyline follows the hardships and squabbles of a wagon train winding its way westward.

Horizon: An American Saga—Chapter 1 is rated R for violence and some sensuality. Old Hollywood peddled romantic notions of the West, but Costner brings savage realism to this film. The battles between settlers and Apaches aren’t graphic, but they achieve an uncomfortable brutality because women and children receive no mercy. One of the main characters is a prostitute with a heart of fool’s gold, but the movie only has one moment of brief nudity that occurs during a bath scene.

Costner aims for a monumental scale with Horizon. The cinematography sweeps across some of America’s most beautiful landscapes. Characters deliver grand soliloquies in which they pontificate about the reasons the downtrodden take the arduous journey westward. And we get sympathetic glimpses of the American experience from various ethnicities. White, Indian, black, and Chinese all have a role.

It’s too bad Horizon starts to crumble beneath the weight of its aspirations. The film takes too long to introduce its massive cast—Costner doesn’t grace the screen until an hour into the film—and just as the audience starts to get interested in a character, the film flips to another storyline. Having multiple storylines converge upon one small town could be an effective structure, but the pacing is all wrong, and there’s not enough tying these subplots together to make a cohesive story.

Most disappointingly, the movie just peters out. It’s not a self-contained story, but it doesn’t set up its sequel with a cliffhanger. The film merely ends in an ill-conceived sizzle reel for the next installment. Costner wants to make epic cinema, but with its battling storylines Horizon feels more like prestige television. This three-hour first chapter would have been more enjoyable and easier to follow if it had been four TV episodes.

Costner has already finished the next movie and started filming the third, but after Chapter 1’s underwhelming ticket sales, the next installment has been removed from its intended Aug. 16 release date, and the franchise’s future looks grim.

—This review has been updated to reflect the canceled release date for Horizon’s follow-up installment.