Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1

Directed by Kevin Costner, Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 follows several characters, including Sienna Miller’s Frances Kittredge, Sam Worthington’s Trent Gephardt, and Costner’s Hayes Ellison, as they attempt to overcome harsh obstacles within the late 1800s. It’s sprawling subject matter that is, for the most part, employed to disappointingly muddled effect by Costner, as the filmmaker, armed with his and Jon Baird’s screenplay, kicks the proceedings off with an uninvolving, half-baked opening hour that contains few elements designed to capture and sustain one’s interest – with the arms-length atmosphere compounded by Costner’s ongoing refusal to provide context or character development for the picture’s myriad of subplots. (It’s clear, for example, that an early attack on a small frontier village is hardly as exciting or impactful as Costner has undoubtedly intended, as the viewer has absolutely nothing invested in any of the characters’ exploits or survival.) The continuing lack of coherent arcs proves fairly disastrous, particularly in the case of a predominantly baffling storyline involving Jena Malone’s Ellen Harvey, and although the movie admittedly does boasts a small handful of engaging digressions within its second half (eg Luke Wilson’s periodic appearances as the leader of a wagon train are an obvious highlight), Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1, which concludes on a rather anticlimactic note, ultimately comes off as a wildly unfocused Western that could (and should) have been seriously shortened and streamlined.

** out of ****