Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 (2024) Review: Kevin Costner’s Would-Be Epic Western is a Tedious Slog

From the lukewarm Cannes debut to the dismal worldwide box-office grosses that failed to recoup its US$50 million budget (US$100 million for the first two films), it’s a bleak journey ahead for Kevin Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1. The poor box-office performance in the first chapter of the planned four-part movie series led New Line Cinema via Warner Bros. to pull Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2 from its initial August release and delayed it indefinitely, allowing more viewers to check out the first movie at home via PVOD. Having finally seen Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1, it’s understandable why the movie tanked in the first place.

One of the biggest problems lies in Jon Baird and Kevin Costner’s limp screenplay that feels like a long-winded prologue stretched to a three-hour length. Costner is no stranger to making long movies (1990’s Dances with Wolves and 1997’s The Postman) but his latest self-directed movie drags all over the place. He takes his time introducing different characters during the first hour: Set in 1859 in San Pedro Valley, we first see a surveyor laying out stakes with the help of his son. A land that would become a new frontier town called Horizon. But it doesn’t sit well with the Apache tribes because the land has been their territory, resulting in some of them massacring the illegal white settlers.

However, years later, we see more white settlers populating the town of Horizon. This leads to a group of angry Apache warriors attacking, setting fire and killing everyone mercilessly. Costner does a good job depicting the matter-of-fact nighttime massacre as he mostly zeros in on the Kittredge family trying to defend their home as the attack keeps on coming. For a while there, it looks as if he has finally found his footing but it fizzles quickly as the plodding storytelling continues afterwards.

We learn that Frances (Sienna Miller) and her daughter Elizabeth (Georgia MacPhail) are the only surviving Kittredge family members after they hide underground for the rest of the night. The two are saved by the Union Army led by First Lt. Trent Gephardt (Sam Worthington) and Sgt. Major Thomas Riordan (Michael Rooker), who would later provide them with food and shelter at Camp Gallant.

Kevin Costner’s character is still nowhere in sight as the story spreads across more character arcs. There’s Pionsenay (Owen Crow Shoe), the leader of the Apache raid who believes that forcing the white settlers out of the land through violence is the best solution. Next, we have Lucy (Jena Malone) arriving in Wyoming with her young son under a different name “Ellen Harvey”. She has escaped from her abusive husband, James Sykes (Charles Halford) and even shot him. This leads to Sykes’ mother (Dale Dickey) instructing her sons, Caleb (Jamie Campbell Bower) and Junior (Jon Beavers) to track her down.

Oh, wait… there’s more: A prostitute named Marigold (Abbey Lee) is introduced and so are others like Matthew Van Weyden (Luke Wilson), who led a wagon train heading to Horizon and a hunter named Tracker (Jeff Fahey) leading his posse to search and kill the Apache killers.

And Kevin Costner? Well, you have to wait until an hour before his character as the horse trader Hayes Ellison finally shows up galloping into the Wyoming territory. The first time I see him, I can’t help but feel his funny-looking hat takes time for me to get used to it. His appearance, however, doesn’t make much of a lasting impression as I expected him to be. The rest of the cast is a mixed bag with Sienna Miller doing a decent job playing the surviving mother, Frances Kittredge but others like Sam Worthington falter with his bland supporting turn as First Lt. Trent Gephardt.

For all the multiple characters and stories sprawling throughout Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1, they are just being laid out without delving deep into their so-called respective arcs. I understand that Costner is planning a four-part saga, but what good does it do if everything feels as flat as the dry, wide-open land? By the time the movie slogs its way to the underwhelming ending, Costner tries to spice up the viewer’s interest with a series of footage of what’s coming next in the following chapter. I hope Chapter 2 will improve considerably.

Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 does have its moments like the aforementioned nighttime Apache attack and a brief encounter involving Costner’s Hayes gunning down one of the characters. Cinematographer J. Michael Muro, who previously lensed Costner’s Open Range (his last best-directed movie so far), successfully captured the stunning beauty of the American West while John Debney’s rousing score deserves equal praise.