Title – Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 (2024) 

Director – Kevin Costner (Dances with Wolves) 

Cast – Kevin Costner, Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington, Jena Malone, Danny Huston, Abbey Lee, Michael Rooker

Plot – Part 1 of a proposed 4 part series, Horizon follows a multi-year period of time where a collection of American citizens battle to find their way in the harsh and unrelenting wild west. 

“The story of a nation unsettled”

Review by Eddie on 08/07/2024

The last time I saw a western on the big screen was in 2007 when The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford came and went from cinemas, making the opportunity to see a new western film on the big screen an exciting prospect indeed. 

No one could accuse Kevin Costner of not putting his money where his mouth is with the divisive American star stumping up in excess of $30 million dollars of his own money to help fund his dream project, the proposed 4-part epic cinematic saga Horizon which begins here with Chapter 1. 

A huge swing which sadly isn’t a home run but also isn’t a complete strike out, the three hour opener to Costner’s expansive tale of the pre and post Civil War American west has moments of greatness and more than its fair share of moments that make you wonder why you should be investing yourself in this often muddled exercise, one whose poor box office returns suggests we may not ever get to see parts 3 and 4 and will be lucky to see part 2 on the big screen anytime soon. 

A major problem for Costner’s series opener, one in which he also stars in as the mysterious Hayes Ellison, a softly spoken Costner stereotype that finds himself in a life and death situation, is the fact even at three hours in length much of what occurs in Chapter 1 feels like an extended prologue and with so many story strands occurring and so many characters who appear in it to varying degrees of success, making it hard to ever get excited about much when things feel like they aren’t getting a chance to breathe or evolve into the plan that makes itself apparent around the half-way mark. 

It’s hard to escape the feeling that things here may have worked better in a mini-series format, think Lonesome Dove or 1883, which is a shame as I like many others were excited for the return of the big screen expansive western that used to dominate cinema screens in times gone by and while everything here is watchable and even in passing moments emotionally powerful and thrilling, there’s too much plodding and filler here that mixed with some extremely poor editing decisions and a lack of character engagement makes everything feel more like box ticking rather than advancement or a narrative that still has the potential to be something special if the stars align. 

Amongst all the plot lines of grieving families, wagon trails, battles between natives and foreigners and manhunts Costner’s talented and loaded cast do their best with sometimes limited and fairly generic material with Sienna Miller’s recently widowed Frances Kittredge, Luke Wilson’s savvy Matthew Van Weyden and Abbey Lee’s Marigold making the strongest impressions while the films as expected stunning vistas and backdrop do make this experience one that suits the big screen format as one would have hoped for when paying for the price of admission. 

Getting to the films final stages which then turn into an extended 5 or so minute trailer of sorts for what’s coming next (with Part 2 already finalised in the editing suite, readying itself for its supposed August release timeframe), you can’t help but escape the feeling there’s not enough glue holding everything together in Costner’s grand vision, no genuine plot line that grips us like it should’ve but there’s still seeds of hope here, with reason to think Part 2 could be an advancement forward for what is an undoubtedly high-reaching but not entirely successful outing here. 

Whether or not we get to see the next chapter in cinemas is still questionable along with whether or not we ever get to see Costner’s risky venture finish up as intended, making this journey for both the makers and viewers an odd one, with hope and dreams much like the early settlers all we have to keep us going, with gold possible but not the likely outcome. 

Final Say – 

It’s great to see a western of this scale on the big screen once more but unfortunately Costner’s big gamble isn’t at this stage a modern day genre classic, more so a solid attempt at something grand that never in this long-winded set-up gets going the way we would’ve loved it to do. 

3 makeshift breathing apparatus out of 5