Kevin Costner is now and will always be an icon. Even with what could somewhat of a limited range as an actor, he’s always managed to instill the characters he has played with varying levels of flawed humanity and a certain unquantifiable vibe of old-fashioned movie star charisma, mixed with a ’50s-style drip of cowboy masculinity. He’s usually pretty selective about his roles, so whenever he decides to work, it’s usually for a good reason.
Over the last few years, Costner has been discovered by an entirely new generation with the Paramount Network smash hit, “Yellowstone,” which he reportedly left before filming the final season due to scheduling conflicts with his longtime passion project, “Horizon: An American Saga.” To be fully transparent, I never quite fell in love with “Yellowstone” like I wanted to, but I’m ride-or-die for Costner ever since 1985’s cult classic western, “Silverado.” My point is this: if Costner builds it, I will go.
Here’s the deal with “Horizon:” As early as 1988, Costner has been developing the story as his take on the real, untreated truth about the Old West and the brutality and bootstrappery of America’s early settlers and colonizers. After years of development, “Horizon” grew into four films, set over a dozen years that not only featured dozens of characters, but also explored the effects of the Civil War on American non-combatants and the bloody battles between American settlers and indigenous people.
But the problem with this take on the material is that not even Kevin Costner can get the funding for four massively scaled movies before the first one even comes out. Producers want proof of their investment before actually agreeing to more investments. So, “Horizon: Chapter One” was released on June 28, with “Chapter Two” being scheduled for release on Aug. 16 while principal photography began on “Chapter Three.” Millions of Costner’s own dollars have been funneled into realizing all four parts of this story.
All of these big ideas have sadly been put on hold, though, after the release of “Horizon: Part One.” The film only made $32 million on its $50 million budget, with “Part Two” being pulled from its August release date. I think the idea is that once “Horizon: Chapter One” starts streaming, the film can take the time and build up a larger audience before releasing the next chapter.
But here’s the biggest problem: “Horizon” never should have been a theatrical release. Don’t get me wrong, I liked quite a bit of it, but there’s no way to actually know if it’s a good movie since it’s not actually a movie at all. “Horizon: Chapter One” plays not like the first chapter in a film quadrilogy, but like the first three episodes of an AMC+ or HBO series.
Three separate storylines go throughout the film, each with multiple characters across several different backdrops of the American West. We’ve got Costner as a horse trader in Wyoming who pisses off the wrong family of ne’er-do-wells and gets involved with a gorgeous prostitute and a young child. We’ve got Pionsenay, an Apache warrior out to kill as many U.S. soldiers and settlers as he can and a group of white thugs out to collect as many Native scalps as they can. There’s Mrs. Frances Kittredge, a young widow disillusioned with the promise of American expansionism. There’s also a wagon train with a dozen more characters heading toward Wyoming and the promise of freedom on the Santa Fe trail.
Most of these characters and their stories are compelling, but “Horizon: Chapter One” doesn’t have enough time to spend with even half of them. Even with its three-hour runtime, “Horizon” is just scratching the surface of this story, barely able to develop these characters beyond establishing their setting and circumstances. The film feels rushed in how it moves through the story and sets up incident and drama, with characters acting in ways that seem counter-intuitive. We don’t know them well enough to understand their motivations.
So, is “Horizon: Chapter One” a good movie? I suppose the answer is yes, because the three hours absolutely rocketed by and, by the end, I was invested enough in the characters and their stories to want to see the rest of the chapters. But it’s also not really a movie. There are no satisfying character arcs and there’s no intensity to anything that happens because nothing is resolved and there’s no payoff to the investment of the viewer’s time. The “Lord of the Rings” trilogy is one giant story also, but still managed to tell satisfying and complete stories in each chapter. Both things are not mutually exclusive.
Regardless. there’s still an old fashioned elegance to Costner’s direction and storytelling choices, reminiscent of his earlier work like “Dances with Wolves.” Even as the film sprawls out into unwieldy tangents with far too many characters and locations, it’s still hard not to be swept up into his romanticized time capsule of the American Dream.
“Chapter Two” is already filmed and completed, so I’m sure we’ll get it in theaters eventually, but the final two chapters should absolutely be released as prestige television. “Horizon” doesn’t look or feel more like a movie than a show. It absolutely plays like something you would find on Paramount+ and is paced like an episodic drama series. Costner has an interesting story here and it would be a shame if he doesn’t get to finish telling it. He deserves that much.
Chapter One
This article appears in Source Weekly July 25, 2024.
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