Film Review - Horizon: An American Saga, Chapter One (2024)

The rousing music swells, the spectacularly stark beauty of the American West rises up and we know we’re on safe, familiar territory. The opening moments of Kevin Costner’s would-be four part epic, Horizon: An American Saga, make it all-too-clear that tradition is the name of the game: it’s as if the revisionist and modern westerns of recent years never happened, as Costner starts his grandiose frontier elegy by filling the screen with just about every convention that goes with the genre.

For its entire three hours running time, it feels Costner is attempting to re-create his glory days from the 1990s but is simply stuck there. In this first chapter, the scene-setter if you will, it feels nothing has changed since Dances With Wolves. It’s more than happy to lean on well-worn tropes as it kicks off the story strands destined to merge together in the subsequent episodes. Advertising handbills for Horizon, a new frontier settlement, establish it as the glue that’s intended to hold the narrative together. The early version of the town is destroyed by Apache’s resisting the white invasion, but it doesn’t prevent more settlers making the arduous journey out west by wagon train. The local army battalion looks after the survivors from the original carnage, but are powerless to stop bounty hunters chasing down the tribe they claim destroyed the town. And, as if out of nowhere, a mysterious man-with-a-past appears, strikes up an association with a prostitute and fires the first shot in what can’t fail to be a long-running revenge saga.

That gun-toting stranger is, of course, Costner himself. We have to wait over an hour for his arrival in what is essentially a preamble struggling to justify the film being a feature in its own right. Curiously, the sizzle reel at the end which gives us an idea of what to expect from the second part, at the very least, also gives us a taste of what this first chapter could have been but, sadly, isn’t. Its biggest problem is its bloated three hour running time, one that indulges in sequences which are both too lengthy and add nothing to the storyline or visual appeal. The various strands vary in strength – Costner’s stranger and the young prostitute is the weakest, while the survivors of the original Horizon camp and their fate has more substance. And the shadow of Dances With Wolves is never far away, especially in those sweeping landscapes or a romantic riverside interlude. There are times when it’s decidedly leaden so that overall the film is disappointingly lumpy. And, dare we say it, just a little bit boring?

Western fans will be more than happy with all the comforting familiarity and visual spectacle but, put alongside more recent offerings such as The Dead Don’t Hurt, Horizon looks decidedly old fashioned. And, while Sienna Miller’s resilient survivor is clearly destined to be a central character, all she’s allowed to do here is pose winsomely. That’s not her fault – it’s down to the direction and Costner is guilty as charged. Despite all its issues, however, the film still has just enough to keep you engaged and we know Costner can do better. Will he hit his stride in August with Chapter Two? The countdown starts here …..