Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1’ on VOD, the Clunky Opening Salvo of Kevin Costner’s Epic Western

Once upon a time in the West, Kevin Costner had an idea for an epic story about manifest destiny with a 12-hour run time, and the first part of that was Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 ( now streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video ). Dear reader, it flopped, leaving the next nine hours in limbo ( Chapter 2 ’s release date was postponed , Chapter 3 started filming a few months ago, and I daren’t make a wager whether Chapter 4 even gets made). None of this is particularly surprising when the state of theatrical movies is in such flux, and when an old dog like Costner – who wrote, directed and starred in the long-in-the-works project, and ended up ponying up some of his own cash to finance it – insists on grinding out an overstuffed cast-of-dozens ultra-Western that for the most part appeals to a narrow, aging audience. Then again, none of this speaks to whether his efforts are for naught creatively; maybe when we sit down to watch it, it’ll actually be pretty good (he said, to the deafening sound of cheeping crickets, and possibly your snoring).

When Does ‘Yellowstone’ Season 5, Part 2 Premiere on Paramount Network and Peacock?

The Gist: I guess we’ll start with the first massacre. Yes, the first one. There are a few in this movie. It gets pretty rough, but it might be rougher if we ever felt invested in it on a level beyond hey, violence is bad! Anyway. It’s 1859, and White settlers had their eyes set on a riverside plot in the San Pedro Valley. There, they’ll build the town of Horizon. A surveyor pounds some stakes in the ground and ties some string between them and then he and his family are slaughtered by the Apache, who don’t take kindly to such territorial encroachment. A holy man whose name I didn’t catch (and it doesn’t matter because he’s only in a couple of scenes before he’s left in the narrative dust) comes across the bodies and buries them and sets up camp and four years later, there’s Horizon. It’s a batch of tents and a few houses and the Great Day Dance Hall and the White people find some happiness until what’s at least technically the second massacre of the movie occurs, which we get to see this time in all its horror, including an awful bit where a cornered family sparks a gunpowder keg and kills themselves and a handful of attacking Apache warriors. Misery.

A boy named Russell (Etienne Kellici) escapes the carnage to fetch help from a nearby military post. Lt. Trent Gephardt (Sam Worthington) and Sgt. Riordan (Michael Rooker) arrive the next morning with some men to comb through the ashes. They turn up Frances (Sienna Miller) and her daughter Diamond (Isabelle Fuhrman) – they hid in a crawlspace as their home burned and family members died – only slightly worse for the wear. They all schlep back to the military camp and settle in, and before you can get out the final syllables of “grieving widow,” we get the feeling that manifest destiny may have plans for romance between Trent and Frances, since they’re the most attractive people around these here parts. Meanwhile, Russell joins up with some jerks who set out to collect Indian scalps for bounties. We also get a glimpse or three into the Apache camp, where the elder Pionsenay (Owen Crow Shoe) doesn’t think Taklishim’s (Tatanka Means) murderous raids on White encampments are particularly wise; “their sons will hunt you,” Pionsenay says, which means, of course, violence begets more violence .

New Movies on Streaming: ‘Horizon: An American Saga Chapter 1’ + More

We don’t see Costner’s face until an hour into the movie, which is shocking, but at least he’s introduced to us via a heroic low-angle idolizer of a shot. He plays Hayes Ellison, a horse trader or somethin’ (we get the feeling it’s more somethin’ than horse trading, although we don’t really find out by the end of the movie, since there’s a lot more movies coming) who clops into the Wyoming Territory and is instantly propositioned by the hottest young woman in town, Marigold (Abbey Lee). Yes, she’s a lady of the night, but still, when Costner directs himself, he’s gonna be positively pheremonal . Marigold is friends with Ellen (Jena Malone), who we met in an earlier scene (yes, this movie has been chopped up on a butcher’s block) putting a few wads of buckshot into an old creep, who somehow survived to send his greezy sons out on a revenge mission. Marigold babysits for Ellen, whose husband is a fancy book-learnin’ type who doesn’t seem particularly suited for Wild West survival. So it goes?

CLICK HERE TO GET EMAILS FROM DECIDER

Two hours into the film, we meet even more new characters. A caravan of covered-wagon pioneers led by Matthew Van Weyden ( Luke Wilson ) kicks up dust on the Santa Fe Trail in Kansas. Among them is a posh-ass couple of Englanders, Juliette (Ella Hunt) and Hugh (Tom Payne), who don’t like to get dirty or pull their weight, and treat the others like servants. Matthew polices a couple of louts who leer at Juliette when she’s bathing, and ponders what he and Owen (Will Patton) should do about the two Indians up on the ridge eyeballing their group. Where this squad fits into the larger story is yet to be revealed. You gassed yet? I imagine some of these scattered subplots will converge into one big Secret Wars megaplot after a bit, if you’re still inclined to dig into the saddle and ride it out through the next nine hours or so.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Horizon is essentially Costner’s Once Upon a Time in the West , although I’d bet that Leone classic has more to say about westward expansion in three hours than Costner does in 12. I’d also like to shout out Costner’s previous directorial effort, 2003’s Open Range , which was essentially his Unforgiven , but it’s so good, you’ll forgive it for any of its derivative thematic elements.

Performance Worth Watching: I’m going to pluck Sienna Miller from this sprawling cast, since she pushes through some of this hefty, oppressive, workmanlike fodder to show the occasional flash of charisma. You’ll believe her emotional performance before you’ll believe she could keep her hair so clean and golden in a tent in the dirt in the mid-19th century.

Memorable Dialogue: “I won’t sing for your victory today.” – Pionsenay response to the Apache raids

Sex and Skin: Brief lady toplessness; an ice-cold sex scene featuring Costner.

Our Take: The problem here is glaringly, screamingly obvious: Horizon feels like episodic television. There’s no dramatic arc to Chapter 1 . It spends literal hours setting up the board to make significant plays later. Nobody wants to watch this now and forget everything about it before the second film debuts, whenever that will be, and then repeat that two more times. Key word being “forget,” which, yes, is an indictment of splintered attention spans being fed more media than they can handle, but is also an indictment of Costner and co-scripter Jon Baird’s material, which struggles to set an emotional hook for these characters.

The only visible arc here belongs to young Russell, who finds himself in the eye of the storm of the climactic sequence – such as it is – which, yes, is another awful massacre. It’s a no-shit-sherlock moral conundrum he’s in: The bounty hunters tell him it’s OK to kill Apache because they killed his parents. But he’s also learning that one person’s terrible ideology doesn’t represent a people. He’s far too young to be witnessing such brutality, yet the final sequence loses some of its dramatic power because so much of what preceded it was a muddled snooze that featured him significantly in four or five scenes, and didn’t lend diligence to his character development. That’s a common problem throughout the film.

Thematically, Horizon is shaping up to be Costner’s attempt to reckon with the nation’s sins. This , the film implies, is what colonialism wrought , and Chapter 1 teases the wrangling of Civil War repercussions in future movies. It’s not a terrible idea by any means, and is the subtext of many classic Westerns. The director has a terrific eye for gorgeous John Ford vistas, and he loves loves loves the ambience of firelit faces. His action sequences are shot and edited with necessary urgency. Visually, the film is thoughtfully, classically gorgeous. And the score is so old-fashioned in its deployment of pushy strings and pianos, I’m not sure if its endearingly retro or just annoying.

The biggest hurdle is the writing and editing. Good moments mingle with terrible moments, but too many moments are blah, unmemorable filler. The film is haphazardly cut, resulting in awkward pacing; characters disappear for what feels like hours at a time. Official diagnosis: Too Many Characters. By the time Luke Wilson turns up in this thing, all you can do is sigh, because our interest in Russell and Ellen and Hayes must be set aside for yet another subplot doomed to be underserved until lord-knows-when. It’s too easy to dump on Costner for his past ego-epics, e.g., Dances with Wolves , Wyatt Earp , Waterworld , The Postman – wow, there’s a lot of them – and Horizon takes it a step further: An attempt to establish the Kevin Costner Wild West Extended Universe. It’s rough sledding so far, and makes him look less like the accomplished filmmaker we know him to be, and more like he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

Our Call: As someone of a certain vintage with an appreciation for classical Westerns, I was game for Horizon , and am tempted to say be patient and see if it makes sense after Costner finishes telling the entire story . But man, is he asking a lot of us. So SKIP IT for now and let the experts determine if the whole magilla is worth a future binge.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

For more entertainment news and streaming recommendations, visit decider.com