Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 (2024)

Starring: Kevin Costner, Sienna Miller, Abbey Lee, Sam Worthington, Luke Wilson, Michael Rooker, Danny Huston, and Jena Malone with a cameo from Giovanni Ribisi
Grade: C-

Even if Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 didn’t match up to its lofty expectations, it’s nice to see Kevin Costner back doing his thing again. Cinema misses him.

Summary

In the San Pedro Valley of Southeastern Territorial Arizona in 1859, two separate parties of surveyors mark stakes on opposite sides of the San Pedro River to outline the homestead lots of a town that is about to be started there, Horizon. There’s one guy marking on one side, and another guy with his son marking the other. Close by, two Western Apache children watch from the mountains thinking the surveyors are playing a game. Minutes later, adult Western Apache join the children with their weapons.

Desmarais (Angus Macfadyen) travels through the night and arrives at what used to be a church. He pulls out a paper advertisement for the town of Horizon, and an old man snatches it from him out of nowhere. He tells Desmarais that Horizon is four or five miles back from where he stands now. Desmarais thinks he passed it, but the old man tells him he rode right through it. He tells Desmarais to go back the way he came but to look when he gets to the river. Desmarais doesn’t really believe that some town will miraculously be there, but he agrees to. Desmarais offers the old man food, but he refuses it. Later, Desmarais comes across the dead bodies of all the surveyors in the opening scene, including the one man’s son. They were all killed by the Western Apache. Two feathers are left by the son’s head. In the Montana Territory, Lucy (Malone) breaks into the house of James Sykes (Charles Halford) while he sleeps, wakes him up by calling out his name, shoots him twice, lets his horse roam free, and steals her child back. James is able to crawl over and shoot at Lucy, but she manages to escape. On the verge of death, James is brought home by his son Junior Sykes (Jon Beavers) and his group. Mrs. Sykes (Dale Dickey) asks Junior where he was, but he tells her that she can ask James all about it if he lives. Next, Junior tells his brother Caleb Sykes (Jamie Campbell Bower) to grab Gratton (Austin R. Grant) to find James’s horse, but Caleb wants to hunt down Lucy instead. Junior tries to signal to Caleb to not say this in front of Mrs. Sykes and the daughters, but Caleb tells Junior that she knows. Junior pushes Caleb off the porch in frustration. Caleb gets back on the porch because he wants breakfast first, but Mrs. Sykes slaps him and reiterates that Junior told him to get the horse. Junior sends her inside to tend to James. Back by the river, Desmarais makes graves for the three people and reads out of the Bible to himself. Elsewhere, a group of Western Apache take out one of their own while he tends to his horse. As Horizon starts to gain traction with many settlers, a man carves his last name of Claypool in stone amidst a bunch of others while his family excitedly watches.

Joseph (Antonio D. Charity) is talking with his friends and is called away by his wife. One of the guys disagrees with the notion that rain follows the plow, but they assure him that it does.

The dance hall is lively that night. Frances Kittredge (Miller) asks her son Nat (Costner’s actual son Hayes) to dance with her because his father James Kittredge (Tim Guinee) isn’t good at it. Nat refuses. An older man named Dr. Tom Bowman (John Coinman) offers to dance with her instead, and she happily accepts. Outside the dance hall, Nat is with two other boys, and one jokingly points a shotgun in their faces. Nat doesn’t flinch though. Nat’s sister Elizabeth (Georgia MacPhail) joins them to tell Nat they’re going. The boy points the gun at her too, but Nat pulls the gun downwards. Once he walks away, Elizabeth tells the boy that this wasn’t nice, but Nat undermines her by telling her to shut up. She gets mad and chases him. Frances walks Nat and Elizabeth over to their father James Kittredge. James and Frances playfully talk about her dancing, and Frances mentions how Nat declined to dance with her. When James asks Nat why, Nat explains that he doesn’t dance with anyone and that a boy looks like an idiot dancing with his mother. At night, the Kittredge family is back at home sleeping. Elizabeth wakes up in the middle of the night and looks out the slot on the door. She comes face to face with a member of the Apache who is peaking in. She wakes up Nat who notices the music in town has stopped. She starts to panic, so Nat pushes her up against the wall and has her be quiet. James and Frances run into the room, and Frances and Nat get their guns and barricade the openings. In town, the Apache raid the place and destroy everything, killing civilians left and right. One guy is a member of the band and won’t give up his fiddle even after being shot with two arrows, though he drops it once he dies. Some people get away and escape to the mountains, with Malcolm (Daniel Link) being one of them. He is about to shoot his rifle from there at the Apache, but a man stops him because it will give away the position they’re hiding from. Bill Landry (Larry Bagby) brings a few others with him to the Kittredge home, so James lets them in. They have an injured man with them. They tell Frances and the other women with them to use wet blankets and rugs to save the roof of their house, so they do. Bill tells James they can nail the door shut as soon as they’re done with the blankets and their man comes down.

James realizes no one else is coming to help and nearly breaks until Joseph tells him to shape up since Nat is watching. In the meantime, young boy Russell Ganz (Etienne Kellici) escapes from the town on horseback. Back at the Kittredge house, Bill’s man is attacked by an Apache and the two fall through the roof. The Apache is about to kill him until one of Bill’s guys shoots the man in the head, with the blood splattering on the dress of someone’s wife. James collects his family and takes them to the secret escape door he has in one room. Elizabeth and Frances go down it, but Nat wants to stay with James. He closes the door on his mother and slams a dresser over it to ensure it being locked, unbeknownst to James who is in the middle of the living room trying to stop the Apache from busting in. Frances and Elizabeth crawl underground through the escape route, but their exit is blocked by rock, and they are losing air. Thinking quickly, Frances breaks apart a gun and hits it through the ceiling to the ground above them. They can breathe through this to stay alive. At the same time, James is losing more men to the Apache and turns and sees Nat stayed back with him. He is saddened because death is near but accepts it. The boy that was messing with Nat earlier is in the room with them and is sickly. He uses this opportunity to apologize to Nat for waving the gun at Elizabeth, and Nat accepts. Underground, Frances and a frantic Elizabeth take turns breathing through the gun. Frances then turns off the lantern to save more oxygen, and Elizabeth is freaking out. Back in town, one family does a prayer together in their tent. When a member of the Apache open it, they set off an explosion and kill themselves along with the guy. The rest of the town goes down in flames, and the survivors that hid in the mountains pick things up the next morning. Russell is able to make it to an Army camp. While the townsfolk clean things up, the US Army rides in led by First Lt. Trent Gephardt (Worthington) and his second-in-command and mentor Sgt. Major Thomas Riordan (Rooker). Trent tells Thomas to fall out and report back to him in an hour. Russell is brought back with the Army. As Trent talks with Chief Scout Neron Chavez (Alejandro Edda), Thomas leads the Army in cleaning up the place.

Trent goes over to some survivors and asks what they’re even doing in this area. They explain it’s their home, but Trent assures them that it isn’t and that it was merely a stop. The Apache are the ones that call it home. Looking at the ad paper for Horizon, he asks if they are the first batch of settlers there. The man points over to three graves of the surveyors and says that they were. Trent wonders why they didn’t take three graves already being there as a good enough sign to not settle there, but one man says they did take it under consideration, which is why they built their settlement on this side of the San Pedro River. Back with the Apache, the hunter who led the attack on Horizon in Pionsenay (Owen Crow Shoe) talks about how they need to continue fighting their neighbors in places that are sacred to them. Elder Tuayeseh (Gregory Cruz) wonders what he hunted, but Pionsenay rambles about seeing a guy being killed for taking a deer from where he shouldn’t be. Tuayeseh argues they aren’t hungry, they don’t live in fear, Pionsenay is impatient with the white settlers on the plains, and he has now basically started a war with them. Pionsenay throws his spear into the ground and says this is what he brought and how they aren’t a threat. Tuayeseh argues that the sons of the men he killed will come after Pionsenay and all of their people, mostly because they won’t know which one is him. Pionsenay welcomes the challenge and adds they won’t find him sleeping in the mountains like his father who was once a great war-chief but has grown old. Tuayeseh tells him to leave, and Pionsenay is fine with it because no one defended him. Tuayeseh reiterates that Pionsenay will have to continue to fight the white settlers until he can’t anymore. Only then, will he understand why Tuayeseh isn’t happy with his victory. Tuayeseh tells everyone there that whoever wants to go with Pionsenay can go. Pionsenay takes his spear out of the ground in anger, and some of the men follow him out. Back at Horizon, Thomas tells Russell that his parents passed away once Russell finds a rifle in the rubble. Russell sobs to himself. Chavez directs traffic for some of the people helping and deals with some guy who gives him shit for no reason. Chavez holds his knife but doesn’t end up using it on the guy.

He wonders into the burnt down Kittredge home and kicks the dresser in frustration. This kick uncovers the underground passageway. He opens the trap door and sees that it caved in from that side, but he looks over and sees the gun poking out of the ground. Trent is still talking with the survivors and apologizes for those who bought title to this land from Mr. Pickering (Ribisi) because now they know what they bought. He stresses that the Apache will not share the land with them. What they build, the Apache will burn down. It’s a site the Army can’t defend. He says that the Camp Gallant settlement is 26 miles north from there. There, they will have the protection of the US Army. They will even get an escort to it right then and there if they are ready to go, but that’s it. That’s the offer, and they have one hour to decide. Just then, Thomas gets Trent’s attention and leads him to the Kittredge house. The soldiers break open the underground passageway and save Frances and Elizabeth. With her baby in hand, a woman tells Taklishim (Tatanka Means) that her sister’s man is gone and there is no father to her daughters, but Taklishim says they will have a father and they will come with them. She wonders why they would want to go with Taklishim since the white settlers are looking for them, but he dispels this because he thinks they are safe where they are at. However, he does say more white settlers will come to Horizon as its congruent with Tuayeseh’s dream. She asks Taklishim what his dream is, but he says he doesn’t dream about this and just says it’s their own bad luck that this happened. She goes and sits down in her tent. At Horizon, they dig graves for all the deceased, and Elizabeth has to identify the bodies of James and Nat for Thomas. Before Nat is put in his grave, Frances holds his body close. At the Apache camp, young boy Sacaton (Bodhi Okuma Linton) tells Tuayeseh that if Pionsenay goes, he will go with him. Tuayeseh brings up his previous speech, if he understands who Pionsenay is, and Sacaton confirms this. Accepting this, he gives Sacaton a wooden tool of sorts that he says has told him where ponies of his were that were stolen. He tells Sacaton he can speak to it when there’s trouble. He leaves him with the departing message that he thinks he will see him again.

Once Sacaton leaves, Tuayeseh asks his other son what he’s going to do, and he comments that Tuayeseh has given him enough and gives him credit for talking to him like his first fathers. Tuayeseh becomes happy that his sons know who they are. Back in Horizon, Trent is told that the people aren’t leaving. He asks who the group of four are, and the guy tells Trent they just showed up from somewhere in the Union. They could help by hunting Apache. The man says he would go along with them. Some of the scouts will too since they’d prefer hunting Apache rather than dig ditches. Trent wonders if it would be unusual if they were paid to track anyone, though he’s heard of towns taking collections to pay for dead Indians. He rhetorically asks if that’s what they meant by “commerce”. The man confirms that they would probably make $100 each. They’d make somewhat less if they brought in the scalp of a woman or child. Trent brings up how the Pimas, Hopi, Yuma, and even Mexicans have hair like the Apache, and he doesn’t think he could tell one scalp from the other, insinuating that the man is going on an unlawful killing spree. Elias Janney (Scott Haze) interrupts and sends the other away and brings up how Trent isn’t the law here by his own admission. Trent argues that there were 20-25 Apache that attacked these people and a few thousand more that didn’t. He says they keep their distance and they don’t bother each other. However, if they are provoked, they can rid the white settlers from the country in a day’s work. Janney invites Trent to come with to keep an eye on them. Otherwise, it’s not his fault. Trent comments that he can detail more men and gather volunteers, but Janney argues that Trent will be a day behind, though he doubts they will come back at all anyway. Meanwhile, Pionsenay leads his group out. The woman tells Taklishim that she follows him, not Pionsenay. Frances and Elizabeth go with Thomas to Camp Gallant. Before they leave, Chavez gives Frances Trent’s coat on his behalf. In the Wyoming Territory, Lucy takes her two-year-old son Sam to go feed the chickens. Wandering horse trader Hayes Ellison (Costner) rides into town. Babysitter and prostitute Marigold (Lee) lives with Lucy and wakes up at 2PM, which Lucy doesn’t appreciate. Marigold is going to go to town, so Lucy tells her not to bring anyone home.

Marigold says she won’t and comments that Lucy’s boyfriend Walter Childs (Michael Angarano) says Lucy is fixed for money now anyway. Lucy reiterates to not come back if she can’t come home alone or on time. Marigold watches Hayes get into town along with some other men, but Mrs. Daley who works at the local hotel threatens Marigold from taking business away from her because she wants to get them a room first. Marigold still spots Hayes and waits for him to walk by. He doesn’t notice her and walks right into the post office. Hayes has Ned (Aaron Bruderer) write and send a letter for him about him staying on by contract to Fort Bridger and he thought to go north and west from there. When he tries to continue his dictation, he becomes distracted by Marigold and tells Ned to help her instead. Ned knows Marigold isn’t going to buy anything and tells her to leave. Marigold doesn’t think Ned can write the letter and tells Hayes that Ned’s not the clerk there and is only standing in, so he may not do a good job. Ned threatens to tell Lucy, who in this town is going by the name “Ellen Harvey”, but Marigold doesn’t care. She just says that she was here to check the time. Before she leaves, she tells Hayes to have Ned read back what he wrote. Once she’s gone, Hayes does ask Ned if he knows how to write. He confirms he does and just says Marigold was giving him shit. Afterwards, Marigold jokes that whoever gets the letter will think Hayes is stupid, but Hayes argues that with him and Ned’s combined efforts, the message was understood. She changes the subject to compliment Hayes for writing and sending money home because it shows character. She knows Hayes and his crew are staying at Mrs. Daley’s hotel and she gives him a rundown on all the girls that work there. However, Hayes says he’s just going to go to his room to sleep. She starts flirting with him and offers a cabin at the end of the trail if he wants something quiet. Ned pops his head out the window to tell Hayes that it’s not her place, but Marigold promises to make Hayes a better dinner than Mrs. Daley after she snaps at Ned. Hayes declines, but she continues to flirt. It starts to work until she talks about the baby not minding. This throws him off for second, but she explains that it’s not hers and she’s just looking out for him when the mother is out.

Naturally, he asks why she isn’t looking out for him now, but she says she is. He’s just alone at the moment, but she assures him the baby will be fine. She also says the kid sleeps through anything, implying sex. Hayes sees Ned shake his head from the window to deter Hayes from her. He reluctantly agrees to see her later, so she sticks her tongue out at Ned. At Camp Gallant, Frances wakes up and finds Elizabeth cowering in the corner of her area in the tent because she shook scorpions out of her boot. Frances kills the scorpions with the boot. At Lucy’s place, Walter readies her to go. Though neither of them has talked to Marigold yet to watch Sam, Walter doesn’t want to be late. Lucy is still angry with Marigold’s smart comments earlier but does note that she brings more money in than Walter does. Lucy refuses to leave Sam alone, even though Walter told his buyers that she was coming with. She tells Walter that if they are buying something from him, her presence won’t make a difference. She goes on about how poor they are until she sees Marigold showing up late. Lucy goes outside to yell at her about how they needed her an hour ago. Marigold tries to run around her and avoid her while insulting her and insinuating she was a whore before Walter, but Lucy stops and slaps her. Walter gives Marigold little Sam and pulls Lucy away, so they can go to the business meeting together, knowing they are already late. During their walk, Walter mentions that if the buyers found “just a little placer downstream, they might judge from that, that there is a deposit higher up, maybe around my plot”. Lucy questions if they found something like that or if he left something there for them to find, and he doesn’t say, implying he did. She angrily walks past him. At Camp Gallant, Frances and Elizabeth stand in town and Elizabeth looks at all the sick and wounded families around. She runs to her tent. Frances is alone when Trent comes over to greet her. She thanks him for everything he has done. Just then, Elizabeth runs out of the tent with Trent’s coat and tells him they brushed it for him. He appreciates it and asks if Dr. Surgeon Vreeland (Michael Todd Behrens) has seen them yet, but Elizabeth says “No” on account of Vreeland’s drinking.

Frances can’t believe she told him this, and a pissed off Trent pops his head into Vreeland’s place of business to find him sleeping. Col. Albert Houghton (Huston) watches as Trent grabs a bucket of water and goes inside to dump it all over Vreeland to wake him up because he wants Frances and Elizabeth to be cleared before they wander through camp. Vreeland wakes up and checks on the two women. Following this, Trent sits down with Albert and Thomas in Albert’s office. He comments how he heard Trent was making speeches at Horizon to try and scare the people out of there, but he sarcastically points out how if they weren’t going to listen to the Apache, they weren’t going to listen to him. Albert then denies Trent’s request to detail ten more men to go to the mountains. Trent is about to protest, but he saw it coming and tells Trent to put it in writing. He will reconsider once he can spare the men. Right now, he can’t. Albert goes on about how people will continue to settle out here, and the Apache think they will be able to stop it with murder. However, people will ignore the graves, no matter how many there are, especially in an area like Horizon. Everyone there will tell each other that if they’re strong enough and whatever else, the land will be theirs without protest. They are the ones that are going to hold out, and Albert says some of them will pull it off. Regardless, he refuses to commit a single soldier there if he doesn’t have to. They have to focus on their survival. Until then, Albert suggests Pickering “find a likelier spot to settle than an Apache river-crossing”. After a frustrated Trent leaves, Albert asks Thomas if he gave Trent something to think about or just made him angry. Thomas admits it’s probably both. They discuss the war, how Thomas knows more people will settle in the west once it’s over, and how the open frontier will come to an end. Albert hopes and assumes they will be dead by the time this comes around, and Thomas agrees.

While they’re still alive though, there is a lot more to come in the Old West, as all of these people’s lives start to become intertwined in some way.

My Thoughts:

The release of Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 brought anticipation with its ambition. With Kevin Costner’s return to the big screen in a major way, him being in the director’s chair on top of that, a western in an era of cinema where they are few and far between, and a promise of sequels that guarantees a load of content and a new franchise to be excited about, Horizon showed a lot of promise. The biggest thing people wondered about moving forward however was if Costner’s dream project might be better suited for the miniseries route considering the scope of potentially four, three-hour epics. Though we can all respect Costner going against the grain because he wanted to see his film in theaters instead of being quickly forgotten about on a streaming service, he still may have proved the skeptics right.

As huge fans of Kevin Costner and his contributions to cinema, the first Horizon of many has shown that though it’s shot for a film, and beautifully I might add, it’s massive story would be a much better fit for television. It’s never boring, but there’s so much involved and unresolved by the end of the movie that it’s almost as if nothing actually happened. It’s all leading to something in other sequels. As a standalone franchise-starter though, it disappoints. It can literally only work as a companion piece with what’s to come. If the sequel came out in the same week, this also could have worked, but we’re STILL waiting for Chapter 2 to release. Chapter 1 isn’t frustrating per say, but it’s three hours of a thousand characters whose names you can’t remember, ten different storylines involving the characters to where it’s hard to keep track of everything, and so many stones left unturned, because they can’t give too much away before Chapter 2, that it leads to a finale that leaves the viewer befuddled. Seriously, the entire movie ended on a cliffhanger that could care less about the viewer wanting (or caring for that matter since most of the issues at hand are minor at best) answers but rather Costner’s message of “Wait until you see what we have in store for you!”. It’s why the ending is the worst of any major film of 2024 by far. It’s a montage of the rest of the sequels and lasts four minutes, despite feeling like fifteen. Essentially, it’s a built-in teaser trailer for four different movies, and it’s used as the ending of this movie instead of completed the narrative of the FIRST three hours of this saga. It’s ridiculous. On top of that, the montage has more action than all of Chapter 1, which is why part of it was used in the fucking trailer, making it the most obvious case of false advertisement seen in years. The fact that this montage of what’s to come was even considered, let alone actually made the ending of the first chapter, shows why this would have been a legendary miniseries for Paramount or HBO rather than a series of unfinished westerns that can only be watched in succession to be fully appreciated. It’s as if Kevin Costner is completely forgetting that to even get to those sequels of epic proportions, you have to sell us on the first one and make us want more of this world he created.

Even if there is more to come, each movie has to be its own story, with a beginning, middle, and end for its runtime and be entertaining in some fashion throughout. Instead, all of these different plotlines are shown in great detail, but they don’t go anywhere substantial since this whole movie is playing the “Waiting Game”. Most of the characters introduced set up something else for the sequel, but others have their own mini-adventure and then die before we can remember who the fuck they are! One thing that Hollywood has been better at in recent years is making sure their cast looks different just so we can differentiate certain characters, especially in some of the longer features that come along. In Chapter 1, there are like three to four guys that have long hair and beards and all kind of look like Jared Padalecki from Supernatural or a relative of him. Actually, why wasn’t Padalecki hired for this? He hasn’t done a movie since 2015 and has only done television since. You don’t think he would have liked to be a part of a production full of his doppelgangers? Not that Horizon is in desperate need of star power, but the lack of interest in the cast from the outside looking in definitely doesn’t help the trajectory of the franchise. Though we appreciate Costner looking to cast so many speaking roles and giving opportunities to up and coming actors and actresses, there needs to be a few more names attached to the production to attract interest from wider audiences. Veterans like Danny Huston and Michael Rooker are always good choices to beef up a supporting cast, but Sam Worthington isn’t what he once was and has always been kind of bland. Plus, Rooker’s performance is done well and has several emotional monologues that he delivers with great conviction like the whole thing with the locket, but you’d be hard pressed to figure out what the fuck he’s saying without captions because of how thick his accent is. As likeable as Luke Wilson is, it’s also hard to take him seriously at times because his delivery just sounds like he’s on the verge of making a joke or is saying his lines ironically. Also, Giovanni Ribisi is on the cast list but is a big part of the sequels rather than Chapter 1, so him being listed as part of the cast for this movie is almost a flat-out lie.

Kevin Costner himself, the whole reason most of us gave this a chance in the first place, doesn’t appear until an hour into the movie. It’s as if they are begging the viewer to lose interest until he shows up. Granted, things do pick up once Costner does show up because he still has it, but once he leaves again, the other interweaving stories start to noticeably pale in comparison to what Hayes Ellison brings to the table with just his mysteriousness. If Costner had any sense, he would’ve at least opened the movie by doing something as Hayes Ellison, whether it was saying a cool line or threatening someone. He was desperately needed to set the tone instead of having the story meander in different directions until he decides to show up. Frances and Elizabeth were the least interesting characters out of the Kittredge Family, yet they were the two who survived out of the four family members. Furthermore, Frances becoming attracted to Trent can be seen from a mile away, but it’s also strange because her husband just died seemingly weeks before they start looking at each other romantically. In addition, the movie has no idea what to do with Elizabeth. She’s all over the place with her personality. She’s annoying and hyper emotional for everything leading up to their escape from the Apache and looks almost suicidal when she runs into some lousy scorpions, with her and Frances acting like they are fighting off lions during the useless cutaway. However, when Elizabeth has to identify the dead bodies of her brother and father, she’s near indifference, which doesn’t align with anything we know of the character previously and comes off as comical in practice. With Lucy or Ellen Harvey or whatever the hell she wants to call herself, they dedicate all this time to what she’s doing and her involvement with the Sykes Family, but there’s not enough time in the narrative to get back to why we should care other than the menace of the Sykes brothers.

It’s too bad because the scene in which Walter thinks he’s on the verge of selling the title to some property to the Sykes brothers when they are just there to kidnap Lucy is a great one. The simplicity of Lucy pointing out how it should count for something that she never told Mrs. Sykes about what James did, and Junior just flat-out tells her it doesn’t, adding that he was willing to burn the whole territory in hopes she was in it, was great. Some of the dialogue and moments of tension can be brilliant at times like the walk-and-talk conversation between Hayes and Caleb that leads to the pivotal shootout or the scene where Trapper tries to influence Russell into shooting an Indian man in Abel’s gun store and Janney showing his heart by stepping in and telling the Indian man to play it cool because it’s just a game. At first, you’re not sure about Janney, as evidenced by Abel telling Russell he is too young for guns and Janney responding, “He’ll grow into it” (a very funny response to this statement by the way), but he shows he’s more levelheaded than we give him credit for after his interactions with Trent. The underlying tension between the differing philosophies of Janney and Sam Elliott lookalike Trapper is one to watch out for in particular. In the coming sequels, I imagine this will be bigger than what we only get a sliver of a taste in Chapter 1. Again, that’s the glaring issue though. This was like the fifth most important story going on, but they were the CLIMAX of the movie. Why wouldn’t the main character close out the movie since he’s the reason we tuned into it in the first place? Either a somber scene where he shows up at Council Grove where his family is apparently at and finds them killed in a Gladiator-like emotional sequence or some type of firefight with literally anyone from the Sykes Family would have sufficed, especially since patriarch James is healthy again in the third act and wanting revenge. Junior tells James that he sent Mike and two others Hayes’s way, leading us to expect an Open Range type of ending that made this all worth it.

No, instead Hayes is chased to a point, stops in the woods near a town with Marigold because they have to feed Sam and he has to get some money, and they have an argument over what to do next since Marigold thinks she can lie to the group and say Hayes is headed to California. He has to set her straight and remind Marigold how far these men have come and how Caleb showed up to Lucy’s house to kill everyone there if he hadn’t showed up, but since he killed Caleb in one of the few exciting scenes in the movie, they’re even more driven to kill both of them. Then, that’s it. The last time we see Hayes is him wondering where the hell Marigold went after they have sex the night before, leaving the big climax to a group of supporting characters that we’re only just starting to get interested in. The action was solid, and the drama in Russell seeing Trapper’s actions was an intriguing moment, but ending the movie on a sequence like that without the main character being involved was underwhelming. Following it up with the aforementioned ending montage that would have been better suited as a pitch for a television show ended the film like a question mark.

The idea to make Elizabeth a symbol of hope for the soldiers at Camp Gallant by cutting out patches from her quilt to give to the young men to basically bless them can be looked at as either heartwarming or corny as all hell. Honestly, it might depend how old you are to see how you will respond to it. To be fair, Thomas’s delivery to Frances about how “More than one will die holding it. It will be that dear to them” was a great way to remind the viewer of the horrors of war, how fleeting life can be, and how the smallest of kind gestures could mean the world to someone. Besides this, the Apache sequences were cliché, and their dialogue made them sound like cavemen. The general creativity with their side of the story was lacking, though I’m sure it will get better in the sequels too. Then again, it might be me just being hopeful again. With Luke Wilson’s Matthew Van Weyden leading a group down the Santa Fe Trail, it’s almost an entirely different movie. It’s even filmed different, with desert landscapes brightened up, a lot of filming taking place in warmer landscapes, and humor sprinkled in to liven the dreariness of the Sykes, Kittredge, and Hayes stories. Actually, maybe that is why Wilson was hired, just because he can bring a comic energy without necessarily doing it intentionally. Still, Matthew around the campfire telling the others about keeping an eye out for the Apache not being as much of a concern as their 14-hour trek the next day, and one guy trying to argue with him about a certain tribe and he deadpans “That’s just another kind of Apache, so again, no” was hilarious. His reluctant speech in trying to tell Sig and his weird friend to not watch Juliette shower was pretty funny too since he was intimidated enough to just leave when the bigger guy stood up. All his interactions with fish-out-of-water pushover Proctor and his pretentious wife Juliette also bring life to the second act, even if it doesn’t go anywhere of note. Their conversation about Juliette being partially at fault because she’s bathing in the very little drinking water they have and how they don’t know when the next rainfall will be was well written. Something is brewing between Matthew, Proctor, and Juliette, and I do like where it’s going.

From the argument over Proctor not helping the other men out because he was working on his book and getting kicked for it, Juliette backtalking Matthew and making fun of Owen’s daughters for looking like men (“She knows were girls daddy. She just misspoke”), and Proctor’s inability to read a room, there is a lot of entertainment value in this chunk of the narrative, even if it doesn’t seem to fit the events of the rest of the movie. On a side note, how did someone like Proctor pull someone as fine as Juliette? Add this to the laundry list of questions I have going into Chapter 2.

Despite my criticism with how the cast was handled, I will concede that a relative unknown like Jon Beavers does have an intimidating presence as Junior and does great as the levelheaded, seething villain with a purpose, as does Jamie Campbell Bower for being the unpredictable, bloodthirsty Caleb who even his brother has had enough of. That Sparta-kick Junior gave Caleb off the porch was perfection. Moreover, Marigold was a surprise, with Abbey Lee doing a great job with what was given to her. She brings an energy the film needs and plays off Costner’s Hayes very well with their opposite personalities. She’s quite funny too, especially with how she interacts with the townsfolk who all can’t stand her and her not giving a fuck. Marigold is probably the most engaging character introduced in the story that actually lasts and her arc becoming part of Hayes’s makes him more intriguing as a result. Unfortunately, the momentum starts to trend downwards once they leave town. It’s not really her fault either. It’s just that there are so many other characters to get to during the runtime, all the follow-up scenes between Marigold and Hayes turn into the trope of her being the annoying hitchhiker that he reluctantly has to bring along because he knows she will be killed otherwise. Marigold admitting her crabbiness and apologizing very satisfactorily after Hayes stone-faces her arguing was a nice departure from what we would usually see in the story like this though, so that was appreciated. Nevertheless, the decision to have the character fuck some random gambler in the middle of running away from everything just felt wrong. After that, Marigold loses her shine. Obviously, we know she’s a prostitute and it’s her job but considering how she has become Hayes’s righthand woman at this point and there are bigger fish to fry at this stage in the story, this throw-in was a momentum killer. It wasn’t even her giving up Sam to a random Chinese family. It was her fucking this random guy, the guy inexplicably knowing Hayes and assumes he’d be a bad father, Marigold making a smart comment to him about her doubts of him getting a job in that town, and him slapping her for it.

To follow this up in the return to Marigold’s arc, she just decides now is the time to fuck Hayes in a weirdly timed moment. Then to accommodate Coster being old and lazy and how he’s all “used up”, she is apparently SO desperate to fuck the 70-year-old that she just tells him to lay there.

Yeah, okay Costner.

Lastly, you cannot convince me that there weren’t scenes that could have been cut. Did we really need to see Caleb take a piss while having Hayes hold his gun for him? Is that really needed as the break in the conversation? Everything else about their interaction was done in an absorbing manner like Caleb wondering if Hayes isn’t talking because he doesn’t speak much or it’s a trick to make Caleb say more than he wants. Then, there’s also the amusing exchange following Caleb giving Hayes some of the awful drink in his flask and Caleb arguing “There is good brandy in there, just don’t know what else”. Still, there are so many things that could have been cut out or at least tightened up to make this more satisfying from a cinematic perspective.

Aesthetically, Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 is a pleasing film that utilizes its landscapes and setting well. The production design is excellent, and there are flashes of brilliance within the story at times. Really, the barebones of greatness are present, but the screenplay just isn’t complete enough by itself. The only way we might be able to appreciate Chapter 1 is if we get the other four chapters, but who’s to say we will care enough to tune in? If Kevin Costner’s argument was that this couldn’t be a miniseries, he did a terrible job in showing it. There is too much of characters we don’t care about because they only reveal so much, and the connection they all have is muddy at best. There’s too little of the star in Costner, which is the only reason we wanted to see this, the ending was horrid, the story was never boring but not compelling enough to want more, all the characters act like they are saying something profound when most of it is actually vague, and by the film’s end, there’s not a single character the viewer is genuinely attached to. Kevin Costner’s passion for westerns and how he lovingly refers to it as “America’s Shakespeare” is noted, exemplified with how enormous he went with this idea because it shows his dedication in wanting to make his own Star Wars for the genre. Sadly, the fact of the matter is that his vision cannot be understood until years from now with all of his sequels released. Until then, all we have is Chapter 1, and it’s been a rough start to the journey so far.

For the record, this is coming from a huge fan of Costner, so it does hurt to admit this.

Fun Fact: Chris Hemsworth lobbied to star, but Kevin Costner turned him down because he made it for himself. Why he didn’t try to get Hemsworth to play literally any other role in the movie like Junior Sykes or even Trent or something to help the box office appeal is beyond me.