The first chapter in Kevin Costner’s four-part, or maybe even five-part, cowboy epic is the cinematic equivalent of a three-hour ride through a Western theme park. If you’re a fan of Stetsons, stirrups and six-shooters — and if you have a lot of patience — you might enjoy the experience. But before you can properly climb into the saddle, you’ll have to wait a hell of a long time.
horizon is a project Costner has been trying to realize since the late 1980s, and is planned to expand into several films over many years, each exploring the impact of the American Civil War on the fictional city of the title. The first two chapters are finished (the second is due out in August). Part three is in production and part four is scheduled to be shot next year. Major studios would not finance a project of this magnitude, so Costner took out mortgages on properties to pay for it himself. He recently said Rich Magazine that he pumped an astronomical $58 million (£45 million) of his own money into the saga.
This first part at least has a strangely ritualistic feel to it, as if the writer, director and star were staging a series of elaborate homages to his favorite cowboy movies rather than trying to tell a story of his own. Every scene and every character here is familiar from old films by John Ford, Sam Peckinpah or Sergio Leone. Or even from episodes of Costner’s hit TV series. Yellowstone (with which the film shares several locations).
Apart from Clint Eastwood, Costner knows how to make Westerns better than almost any other living filmmaker. After all, he is the man who gave us Dances with Wolves And Open range, both are equally ambitious and equally difficult to finance. The first, about a US Army lieutenant who befriends the Sioux people, was one of the most successful Westerns in history, winning seven Oscars and making a fortune at the box office. The second, about honest ranchers confronted by a corrupt lawman, was also well received. Both played on the nostalgia factor but avoided the racist chauvinism so often associated with the genre.
Visually, this new film is as stately and handsome as its predecessors. Still, it’s hard to keep track of the many different storylines and characters. The narrative begins in 1859 with settlers surveying land in the San Pedro Valley, naively ignoring the hostile Apaches who watch over them. A woman named Lucy (Jena Malone) breaks into a frontier settlement, shoots a gray-haired man at point blank range, then escapes with a blond child.
Before we can fully comprehend what is going on, Costner stages the film’s first big action scene. The Apaches raid the settlement of Horizon in the dead of night. This is gripping, very brutal footage that gives the film a much-needed boost of savage energy. Houses are set on fire. The frontiersmen desperately try to protect themselves by blocking the doors, but the Apaches are on the roof. Some of the women (including Sienna Miller’s Frances) hide in a stuffy tunnel beneath their hut while the carnage continues above them. By the time the U.S. cavalry arrives, the settlement is destroyed.
The serious, idealistic Lieutenant Trent Gephardt (Sam Worthington) asks the apt question: “What are we doing here?” He points out that the white settlers are encroaching on the territory of the indigenous people.
Costner’s character Hayes Ellison is even more silent than John Wayne in The Wild SeekersWearing a Mountie hat and a walrus beard, he’s one of those mysterious cowboy loners who prefers to scowl rather than talk. He rides into a remote frontier town, apparently to trade horses. One minute he’s being approached by an impossibly glamorous young courtesan (Abbey Lee), and the next he finds himself in a gunfight. Whether making love or shooting someone, he’s the same unflappable presence.
A plot that plays out similarly to a Yellowstone Prequel, follows a covered wagon train heading west. Another shows a group of white vigilantes slaughtering Apaches and selling their scalps. This is not exactly a revisionist western, but at least there are local actors and sometimes the Apaches’ point of view is taken. Costner makes excellent use of the landscape, both the dusty red plains and mountains we know from Ford’s films and the green forests and golden valleys of Montana that we also see in YellowstoneThe film’s impressive sense of scale and grandeur is enhanced by John Debney’s swirling score. It’s just a shame that the performance is so ponderous and slow.
And while this first chapter of horizon is very long, but it turns out it’s not quite long enough. The ending is oddly abrupt. It’s as if someone just told Costner it was time to stop, even though nothing is resolved. The wagon train is still at the beginning of its journey. The budding romance between Worthington’s lieutenant and Sienna Miller’s brave but elegant frontierswoman hasn’t progressed beyond a first chaste kiss. Most of the other main characters have barely been introduced.
Costner has been on the trail for three hours already, but it turns out he’s gotten practically nowhere. Before the credits roll, he hits us with a frenetic montage of shootouts and chases from the next film in the cycle. While this explosion of images suggests that An American Saga might come fully to life in the later episodes, it also reminds us how laborious that first chapter was.
Directed by Kevin Costner. Cast: Kevin Costner, Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington, Danny Huston, Michael Rooker, Jena Malone, Abbey Lee, Luke Wilson. 15, 181 mins.
“Horizon: An American Saga Chapter 1” will be in cinemas from June 28th
