Film Review: Kevin Costner's Horizon is ambitious — but frustrating
Kevin Costner in Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter One.
- Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter One
- ★★★☆☆
- Cinema release
Opening in 1859, Kevin Costner’s three-hour film touches upon virtually every sub-genre of the Western as the story unfolds, giving us the Cavalry vs the Indians as Lieutenant Gephart (Sam Worthington) goes up against the Apache warrior Pionsenay (Owen Crow Shoe), along with settlers battling corrupt ranchers, and an imperilled wagon train, and a prospector (Costner) who finds himself protecting a woman and child from psychopathic outlaws.
To say that it’s epic in intent is to understate the case: this is Costner’s How the West Was Won, as his many and varied characters attempt to tame and civilise ‘one of the last great open spaces’.
Costner has set himself an impossible task, which is a little frustrating as each of the story strands might easily have delivered a fine film in its own right; but in continually cross-cutting to different forms of danger and threat, he makes it very difficult for the audience to invest itself in the characters and undermines Costner’s sure touch when it comes to situating vivid action sequences in a beautifully shot landscape.
